Rebirth
by Khapitan
Summary: [HIATUS] War is a bugger, and the Doctor is about to encounter it first hand... A dead TARDIS, a strange girl, issues with a twig, hidden secrets, little flashing mauve lights, and a burning city are only the beginning of his problems... My first, so be nice.
1. Chapter 1

_Always a first time for everything!  
Welcome to the Escher-like confusion of my mind, in which I am somehow (don't as how) able to pluck at random ideas, stick them together, clean and polish them and, one way or another, create this random story which you will see here..._

_It starts with just the Doctor, but rest assured, others will come along later.  
Please comment, I like to know that I'm not completely alone in finding what I write interesting and fun.  
But above all else (and this goes for your life in general) Enjoy yourself! _

_oJESSo  
_

* * *

_  
_There was an echoing, grating sound… a faint impression of gentle movement, and a warm sensation of life that radiated throughout the TARDIS… 

The Doctor lent against the central console and chewed his thumbnail absentmindedly. On the grated floor in front of him lay a heaped up assortment of wires and screwed up pieces of metal. But it wasn't this mess that was worrying him, not now anyway. Not since the little mauve light had repeatedly begun to flash… _Mauve…the universal colour for danger…_

'What's this about, then?' he said to the general space around him.  
The TARDIS whirred back at him in a general TARDIS-like way.

'Flashing lights…,' murmured The Doctor, 'I didn't even know this part of you _had_ flashing lights.' He bent down to peer through the metal grating. 'What do you want to flash for?'

There was no response from the ship, well… why would there be? It was a ship after all. A living, telepathic ship true… but it wasn't like it was human. It couldn't talk back.

The Doctor straightened up and prodded at the console. It bleeped once... and that was it. That was _it_. The TARDIS just ignored him... just continued to nonchalantly whirr through the vortex, almost as though everything was normal... like it _wasn't_ flashing mauve coloured lights in an irritating manner.

But it was. And it was irritating.

Temporarily giving up with the console, the Doctor sighed and ran his fingers through his hair.  
The light blinked cheerfully at him.  
'Please, please, _please… _don't make me look through the manual,' he said to the mauve flicker. It ignored him.

The Doctor gave the console an irritated kick, paused until he could feel his toes again, and stalked off into the depths of the ship.

Five hours later, he returned with a triumphant grin  
'You're a type C sensor crystal, connected to the Telepathic Circuits!' he told the blinking light gleefully. Then his face fell.  
'Wait…,' he said slowly.  
'You're flashing,' he told it.  
'Flashing,' he said again. 'In a distinctly mauve colour…'  
'Mauve is bad,' he reasoned.  
He squinted at the light  
'Mind you… it could be magenta…maybe even indigo…'  
He put on his glasses. His face fell.  
'Mauve,' he confirmed, 'damn…'

Alright, so something was going on with the TARDIS' telepathic circuits… It wasn't _that_ unusual. In fact, the Doctor couldn't really remember a time when he wasn't fixing his ship in some form or another, except that this time there was nothing to fix.

'I even looked in the damn manual,' he complained sullenly to his feet, 'that thing's over two hundred million pages long… A2 pages and all…'

A sudden thought occurred to him. He blinked, and then rushed around the central column until he was facing the small TV screen.  
'Where are we?' he murmured to himself.  
The TARDIS whirred at him, and the mauve light continued to flash smugly.

After several minutes of flicking switches and buttons, the screen flashed a name. The Doctor considered this name. It wasn't an unknown name, he had definitely heard of it. However, whenever it had appeared, it had always been followed by the words: 'DANGER', and 'UNKNOWN INFORMATION', and even in extreme cases: 'FOR GOD'S SAKE, KEEP AWAY. SERIOUSLY… YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE GETTING YOURSELF IN TO. DO NOT APPROACH. IN FACT, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. YOU'RE THINKING ABOUT IT AREN'T YOU? WELL STOP IT. I MEAN IT. STAY AWAY…' and so on.

If the Doctor had had time, he would have bullied the TARDIS into making a sharp u-turn and gone as far away as possible. Every single Time Lord that had ever gone to that planet never came back… No, not just that. It wasn't that they had died… it was that they had completely ceased to exist… gone, erased, non existent… only remaining in others memories.

The Doctor blinked. Like being sucked into the void… except you never existed in the first place… like a parallel world, where you had never been born, and you now suddenly had to live on… because you couldn't go home… it was to late, the walls were sealed.

_You knew it would happen, _said a little voice somewhere inside the Doctor's head. _You knew it couldn't last forever…it had to end. All things end. And you're always left…all on your own…alone._

The TARDIS gave a giant shudder and emitted a deep bellowing sound, like a wounded hippo…Without warning; a large part of the domed ceiling flung itself violently downwards, accompanied by a horrible gut-wrenching crack. It swung madly, still attached by several wires, and thudded into the Doctor.

He felt the weight of it as it cannoned into him, and fell heavily onto the grated floor. For a brief moment, he wondered why he hadn't decided to refurbish the room with some sort of mattress base… so he could land softly, bounce up unharmed if he ever fell, and even sleep where ever he wanted… it seemed like such a good idea…

Part of the console crackled, and sparks showered everywhere. _Ah, yes, _thought the Doctor madly, _Mattress flooring would never work… I set fire to things far too easily…_Another lump of ceiling fell and the ship shuddered again. Temporarily winded and with aching ribs, the Doctor screwed up his eyes and tried to pull himself to his feet. But the floor lurched sickeningly, and he was sent sprawling onto the floor again.

From the depths of the vessel, there quivered up a strange, unforeseen noise which the Doctor had never heard before. The kind of noise as would be expected if a large dinosaur attempted to eat an oversized crunchy bar… not that it would ever happen. But if it did, then the noise it would make would be very similar to the sound that now rumbled out of the TARDIS.

The mauve light turned off. Although this was of little joy as, unfortunately, so did every other light within the ship. Dragging himself unsteadily from under the rubble, the Doctor raised a hand to his head, swore, and attempted to thump the console.

In retaliation, it creaked harshly at him, and then proceeded to explode.


	2. Chapter 2

_**"Dragging himself unsteadily from under the rubble, the Doctor raised a hand to his head, swore, and attempted to thump the console... In retaliation, it creaked harshly at him, and then proceeded to explode..."**_

_I hate type C sensor crystals that are attached to the telepathic circuits...  
Have fun with chapter 2!!_

_oJESSo_**  
**

* * *

There was a forest. Not just any kind of forest either; it was very big, very green and, more importantly, it was a rainforest - and at this point in time, it was fully living up to all expectations, and raining. 

As the forest's rivers began to swell, and the soft, moist earth that covered the ground became sodden, the TARDIS landed. Well… if you can call a large, blue police box screaming towards the treetops with smoke billowing from it a landing…Which you can't… Not without putting the word 'crash' in front of it.

There was a distinctive flash that lit the sky as the ship shot through the planets ozone layer. This was shortly followed by a long drawn out whining noise and the TARDIS plummeting through the sky, leaving a tail of scorched fire. It hit the top most canopies of trees, plunged through the branches with a horrible cracking sound, and jolted to an unexpected stop several feet above the ground.

Deep inside, the console room was little more than rubble. Deep underneath the rubble, the darkness stretched away in an almost silent void… a deep, forgotten emptiness that devoured the light and sucked away the sound.

_He felt it in the recesses of his consciousness… a rhythmic, pulsating sense, almost as if It were taking deep shuddering breaths… twitching spasmodically… Then suddenly, there was a release, although there had been no inclination of any kind of previous build up. The force jolted forward…painfully, angrily and with such power, that it was gone in an instant._

If anyone had been watching this crash, they would have said something like, 'wow.' They would have shaken their head at the sound of the snapping trees, and blinked in surprise at the faint explosion of light as the vessel crashed.

They would have been deeply impressed at the amount of smoke that billowed upwards and the occasional flashes of light from snapped cables… They would have watched in a confused wonder as a giant golden ball erupted from the smoking wreckage and cannoned away into the forests depths… and, after being suitably amazed and impressed, they would have rushed over to the crash to search for survivors.

Unfortunately, the only witness was a small koala-like creature with unusually large ears and a permanently bewildered expression.

The blue box hung from the tree, supported by two thick branches, with its doors facing vertically downwards. The smoke that poured off it snaked its way through the branches, gently caressing the wet leaves as it slithered past, and curled up into the rain spattered air above.

The rain pointedly ignored it and continued its journey downwards.

Inside the overturned TARDIS, there was a brief flicker; a small, almost unnoticeable, spasm of light in the otherwise bottomless blackness. It wasn't bright enough to illuminate anything, but merely provided the vague impression of some sort of room... if you could call what was left a room; it looked more like a scrapheap.

Deep underneath the console debris, the Doctor stirred. There was... a muddled sensation, a lost feeling. Oh, he could sense _himself_, it would be very odd if he couldn't, but there was something missing; something barely noticeable but very _very_ important.

He tried to move and let out a small gasp of pain… it felt like… in his bewildered state he attempted to analyze himself… it felt like pain.

For a brief moment, he considered weather he should not bother... just stay smothered underneath the wreckage, give up. The Doctor sighed and let his head flop against the blackened remains of an unidentifiable lump of TARDIS.

After only a few minutes, he opened his eyes again and frowned.

Outside the TARDIS, the koala-like creature crawled along an outstretched branch and purred at the strange blue box. It had never met something like this and, like all of its kind; it aimed to welcome the ship to it's planet through the ancient art of bum sniffing. However, before it was able to do this, the TARDIS doors slammed open with a thud and the Doctor fell out. He landed heavily; face down, onto the muddy ground and was promptly followed by a light shower of random lumps of metal.

There was a long, drawn out pause.

The koala-creature clambered slowly down the trunk of the tree and took a tentative sniff at the body.  
In a muffled voice, it said; 'Ouch,' and very slowly rolled over.

The Doctor opened his eyes and looked up at a large, fluffy, and bewildered looking face.  
'Ah,' he said and furrowed his brow.

His left arm hurt, and his shoulder, and his head. He blinked as the rain stung his face. There wasn't much of him that _didn't_ hurt when he thought about it long enough.  
He tried not to think about it.

The koala-creature sniffed him again and began to lick his ear.

Very slowly, the Doctor sat up and looked dazedly around. He tried to pull himself to his feet, but let out a secondary gasp and collapsed back onto the floor. A slow, pain-numbed thought came to his head.

It was really wet.  
He stared blearily upwards. Ah, that would be because it was raining.

Another, much more urgent realization arrived, causing him to sit up sharply and wince.  
_There was the release, but there had been no inclination of any kind of build up. The force, the energy, had jolted forward…painfully and angrily and with such power, that it was gone in an instant…_

'No… No, no, no, no.'

The koala-creature made a quiet clicking noise.

'It's gone,' he said blankly, 'just gone.' He let out a short laugh, more out of shock than anything funny. That's what was missing; he'd never realized it before. How much a part of him it had become…

His gaze landed on the bundle of clicking fluff.  
'Ha,' he said, now with no hint of amusement.

The TARDIS was gone.

Not dead, not like when it fell out of the void. _Then _it had died, if only temporarily. Oh, it had still _been_ there, but was just dead. Like a corpse. Now… he glanced up at the shell of the ship and winced. Now it was just... gone.

The koala-creature approached him again and head butted his arm. Probably in what it thought as an affectionate way, since the welcoming butt-sniff had failed. The Doctor flinched, and recoiled.

'Ouch,' he murmured again. 'I forgot how much hurting hurt.' He frowned as he tried to understand what he had just said, and then his thoughts returned to the empty husk of his ship.

Very slowly, his head turned upwards again to stare morosely into the belly of the TARDIS. It was completely black, completely gone, completely empty and full of noth – there was another brief flicker of light.

The Doctor hearts suddenly leaped as he squinted at it. There was something, one small something, left! And what ever it was, it was the last living part of his ship. The _only_ thing that remained of her…

It was a type C sensor crystal.

It blinked at him in a happy, mauve way.

Then the branch snapped.

And the TARDIS fell on him.


	3. Chapter 3

_Introducing... new characters!!!  
Unless you already counted the koala-creature as a character... which it kind of was... so never mind...  
I don't know where this innocent young creation came from... I love her to bits though, so I might just have to fabricate the truth a little and pretend that she's based on me.  
_

_Less talking in this one... It always used to bore me in books where there's huge lumps of description and no talking... if you feel the same way, bare with me on this one... it is SO worth it!  
_

_oJESSo _

* * *

Somewhere deep in the forest sat a girl on a rock. This in itself was most unusual. She had golden blond hair and bright blue eyes but this detail wasn't very relevant to her; in fact, she wasn't even aware of it. The rock beneath her was large, flat and high enough so that she could curiously watch a plume of smoke that coiled itself above the tree tops. 

The girl took a deep breath, savoring the damp air, and smiled to herself. The rain had eased off and left the forest in a misty image of quiet calmness. If there had been any birds living on this planet, they would have been deadly quiet, as though trying to preserve this perfect still moment.

Swinging her bare legs around, the girl jumped off the rock and, pausing long enough to enjoy the mud squelch between her toes, disappeared into the trees. She pushed herself through the scrub until she reached the smoldering remains of the TARDIS.

It lay on the floor, face down, and covered with a light littering of leaves and branches. The girl stopped and considered it for a moment. It didn't look like anything impressive to her… which she found incredibly surprising and mildly annoying.

She shrugged off her displeasure at the sight of the ship and crouched down beside it, running her hands slowly over the grainy surface. After a moment, another smile spread across her face as her first impression gently changed. True, it didn't look notable or exciting, but it _felt_ right.

The girl studied the blue box… there were no signs of any doors, so she supposed they were underneath and the object was in fact lying face down in the mud. Happy with this conclusion, she dug her fingers under the rough edge of the ship and strained her muscles. Extraordinarily, the TARDIS began to lift up.

Once again, if anyone had been watching, they would have gasped at the sight in front of them: the small girl, who was lifting the large, heavy box to an upright position as if it were a giant, blue feather.

Unfortunately, once again, the only witness was the small koala-creature who had retreated back up the tree. It watched the happenings below with its usual bewildered expression, occasionally clicking it tongue and making gentle purring noises.

As the TARDIS lifted, it revealed the body of the Doctor lying still in the mud. As luck would have it, the ships doors had been left wide open, meaning that when it had dropped on him, he had merely become trapped inside of it, instead of being squashed to death.

The girl bent down beside him.  
He was unconscious.  
She put her head to one side and let her eyes travel across his face. She could tell there was nothing broken about him, at the most there would be bruising… his right arm... anyway, he would recover, she knew. But it wasn't just his apparent state that kept her starting at him… For some reason, she found it incredibly difficult to remove her gaze, he was just…_fascinating_.

For a fleeting moment, she wondered what would happen next. She knew what was _supposed_ to happen, what _had_ to happen otherwise they would surely die... but she realized that she had no way of confirming that it would. How would he react when he woke up? Would he trust her? Would he go with her?

For the first time in her short life, she was unsure of what the future would hold and this, in her child-like mind, created a deep sensation of confusion and fear.

She stayed by his side, watching him for a long time, growing used to his face, before backing away and sitting down on a fallen tree. Once there, she sat completely still, not moving an inch, and waited. Waiting was something she was _very_ good at.

* * *

A deep and loud whistle echoed through the workshop, signifying the end of the seven hour shift. Madison straightened up from behind the large, green sweeper which she used to collect discarded wool, and heaved a contented sigh as the whirring of the machine died down and finally stopped. 

Her job was probably the least sort after job in the whole of the town… in the whole of any town that sat upon the planet, in the whole of the planet, in the whole of the solar system, in the whole of the universe, in the whole of _any_ and _every_ universe that _ever _existed in _any_ time and _any_ place… _ever_.

Madison realized she was staring bitterly at her sweeper. She shook her head and began pushing the machine into the storage bay, ready to use tomorrow… and every other day after that… probably for the rest of her life…

It wasn't really that bad. She tried to comfort herself and focus on the good points of her job. Apart from the hard work and complete boredom there was… there was… it was close to her home. She shrugged half heartedly, that was only because she lived in a pokey little flat next to the factory.

'Finished for the day, Mad?'  
Madison turned around and looked into a heavily bearded face.

'Ah,' she said trying to force a friendly smile onto her face and making it look more like she was deeply inhaling dog poo, 'hello, Ryan. How are you?'

Ryan's beard beamed at her.

'Good thanks, been a good day, just got my pay check.'

Madison nodded. She didn't care. In fact, that was a lie. She _did_ care, she cared so much it made her want to set fire to Ryan's chirpy little face. _She_ should have been the one to get the promotion, not _him_. He used to be a sweeper just like her, but then he got lucky and now… now he got everything he wanted.

'You simply _must_ come round to dinner sometime, Mad,' Ryan said, as though he actually cared one inch about her. 'We'd love to have you.'

Madison considered the man in front of her. He clearly had no desire to let her ever set foot in his beautiful, sterile house, but you could almost, _almost_ believe that he did.Even Ryan's beard was good at lying.

The man shrugged one shoulder, flashed a grin, and strutted out of the workshop. Madison watched him leave and resisted throwing something at his retreating back. She hated everything about the greasy man, even the way he called her Mad.

Locking the storage bay doors and retreating to her small bedroom, Madison realized that as long as Ryan was working in the same place as her, he job was most definitely, with out a doubt, the worst job in the entire world.

* * *

It had been eight hours, but that meant absolutely nothing to the young, blue eyed girl, and she sat and stared relentlessly at the unconscious Time Lord. Time was as irrelevant to her as the politics of Geneva is to a rock. 

Very slowly, she tore her gaze away from the Doctor and allowed it to flit over the koala-creature in the tree. It blinked stupidly at her. She sighed and re-focused her attention back onto the man. There was a sensation that it would be soon…


	4. Chapter 4

_**"It had been eight hours, but that meant absolutely nothing to the young, blue eyed girl, and she sat and stared relentlessly at the unconscious Time Lord. Time was as irrelevant to her as the politics of Geneva is to a rock.**__**  
...There was a sensation that it would be soon…"**_

_Ohh... the suspense is killing me!  
But not really, because I know what happens... it would be really really worrying if I didn't, for then who would be the one writing it?_

_oJESSo_

* * *

The Doctor's eyes flickered.

He erupted from the deep depths of unconsciousness accompanied by a thudding pain in his head, which met up with the pain in his arm, and decided to have a loud and gut-wrenchingly painful party.

He couldn't help letting out a small groan before snapping his eyes open and focusing on the branches above him. For a brief moment, he was afraid that the thick, brown and looming tree limb above was going to fall on him. Stuff falling on him had already happened twice today and he really, _really_ hoped that it would not happen again.

The Doctor winced and sat slowly up, trying to shake some of the clinging mud from off his arm. He glanced to his left and saw his broken ship lying on its side in the mud. Like the girl had done a few hours earlier, the Doctor gently ran his hand over the grainy woodwork in an almost sorrowful gesture. Then, using the husk of his ship to help, he pulled himself unsteadily to his feet, glanced at the girl, and turned back to consider the TARDIS.

He blinked, did a small double take, and gave a bewildered look at the girl. Without moving from her frozen position on a fallen tree, she smiled at him in a happy manner. With a quizzical look forming on his face, the Doctor opened his mouth to speak.

'Why are you only wearing one shoe?'

Slightly taken aback, he paused and glanced down at his feet. One shoe and one mud-stained lump with small wriggly toes gazed solemnly back at him... he hadn't even realized that he'd lost a shoe... and _why,_ of all things the things he could loose in a ship crash, would he loose a shoe?

He gave a fleeting look at the girl again and she responded with an unblinking stare.

'Why aren't you wearing _any_ shoes?' he asked.  
She ignored him. 'You look daft with one shoe.'  
The Doctor frowned and the unexpected image of an x-ray machine floated from the corner of his mind. He shrugged at the girl.

'And why is that Alkoden hanging about?'

After looking momentarily puzzled, the Doctor spun around and glanced up at the tree above him. On a low hanging branch sat the koala-creature looking, as it always did, mildly bewildered.

'They're supposed to be very unlucky,' said the girl conversationally. 'Most people kill them if they get the chance. "Before it kills me" they usually say. Well… actually they usually say; "Ah! Quick, get the gun! Kill it! Kill it! Nasty, unlucky little bugger…"'

The koala-creature purred at the Doctor, leaped out the tree and landed on his shoulder. As could almost be expected from such a stupidly bemused looking thing, it promptly fell off and splatted onto its back in the mud. The Doctor scratched his cheek and looked down at the thing as it waved its short legs pitifully in the air. After a pause, he picked it up and carefully placed it back on the tree branch.

'I like it,' he decided, and grinned as a thought came to him. 'It's got big ears.'  
'And why is that important?' asked the girl, eyeing the Doctor up and down.  
The Doctor frowned again. 'Well… it isn't important. I just… it's familiar…'  
'Big ears?' she retorted. 'Who do you know who has big ears?'  
The Doctor opened his mouth to reply… then paused, unsure of what to say.  
'Apart from you, I mean,' said the girl. She looked up at the sky with a curiously calm expression.

'What?' said the Doctor.  
'What?' replied the girl.

'Are my ears big?' asked the Doctor, raising his hand to his face subconsciously. The girl gave a light laugh.  
'No,' she said, smiling, 'but they were, weren't they?'

'What?' said the Doctor again.

She said no more, but gazed serenely upwards. The Doctor watched her, waiting for a response, then realized that none was coming. The koala-creature once again leaped from the tree, and this time landed successfully on the Doctor's back. It clambered up with surprising speed and placed itself on his head. Once there, it purred again, fixed the Doctor with an upside down stare of complete bewilderment, and bit him thoughtfully on the ear.

'Ah!' said the Doctor.

The bundle of fluff clicked rapidly at him, emitted several low purring noises, then jumped back onto the tree. As the Doctor stared at it, he was sure it was giving him a smug look. At least... he thought it was... it was hard to tell when it had such a bewildered face. He turned back to the girl, the strange comment she had offered only moments before, completely forgotten.

'Sorry, what's this thing?' He jerked a thumb behind him at the koala-creature. 'An Alkodon?'

'Alko_den_,' she said, 'native only to this planet. Translated in the common language as "unlucky pest", although,' she gave the creature a fleeting glance, 'they seem to be quite mild.' The Alkoden clicked its tongue at her.

'Do you live here?'  
Once again, the girl laughed.  
'Don't you ask a lot of questions!' She said.  
'Yeah, I like to know things. Starting with where I am and working my way up from here,' said the Doctor.  
'You know where you are. What's this planet named?'  
'Pericolo,' the Doctor said, 'everyone's heard of it. Well… every Time Lord had heard of it. We were warned never to come here, my TARDIS…' he felt a pang of loss but swallowed and ignored it, 'she was warning me not to come, then we crashed… but I don't know anything else about this place other than the name and the warning… care to fill me in?'

The girl smiled, 'oh, I'm not from this planet. I've been traveling.'

There was something, either in the way that she said it or the look in her eye, which warned the Doctor not to ask any further into the subject. Swallowing his curiosity, he nodded instead and looked at the ground, his mind returning to the TARDIS. The girl watched him. He seemed suddenly full of age and deep thought, completely unaware of her sitting there. She permitted herself another small smile as he ran his hand distractedly through his hair.

'I'm the Doctor,' he said after a while.  
'Hello!' the girl said cheerfully.

There was an awkward pause as the Doctor waited for some sort of response. When none came, he said; 'and… what's your name?'

She tilted her head to the left and appeared to be deeply considering the question. The Doctor watched her and subconsciously gripped his arm where it had been caught. After what seemed an unusually long time, the girl smiled dreamily and tilted her head back towards him.

'Fyffe,' she concluded.  
The Doctor gave a coy smile.  
'Fyffe?' he repeated.  
'Yes,' said Fyffe, 'it's a small town in Alabama, on Earth.'  
The Doctor looked her up and down. 'Human?' he asked, surprised.  
Fyffe gave a soft laugh.  
'No,' she said.

'Look,' the Doctor's face was desperate. 'I just need to know where I am. I want to know what's going on, why I crashed, why my ship is...' he realized that it may be difficult to explain the complexities of the TARDIS to the young girl, '...broken,' he finished. 'I need help,' she looked at him blankly, 'can you help me?'

Very slowly, the girl shook her head. 'I can't help you,' she said, and almost appeared resentful of the fact. 'I don't know how. I'm not good at thinking in the right way... I think.' She raised her arms and shrugged in an apologetic gesture.

The Doctor looked gloomily at his foot again.  
'There is a city nearby,' Fyffe said, 'I can take you to it, if you want.'  
He looked up, hopeful.  
'I've never been to it,' Fyffe continued, 'and don't know anything about it, or who lives there, or even if its the way that I think it is, or if there is any ares we should avoid while traveling there... but they may know what to do.'

'Great,' came the response.

After considering the Time Lord intensely for some time, she added; 'I realize that you haven't had the best of days, and I don't wish to rush you or cause you any extra discomfort... but inside this forest are giant bears that like to eat things.'

The Doctor blinked at her.  
'Things?'

Fyffe smiled. 'Yes,' she said pleasantly. 'Starting with Alkoden and Erreeps - that's a kind of sheep by the way - and ending up with anything they can get their giant claws upon... or razor sharp teeth in.'

As though the forest had been specifically waiting for a perfect dramatical moment, a loud bear-like bellow echoed from between the trees. Fyffe raised her head as the Doctor spun around, and both gazed into the dense trees behind them.

'I'm guessing,' said the Doctor slowly, 'that "anything they can get their giant claws upon" would include me and you, yes?'  
Fyffe nodded calmly. 'I think the city would be the best idea at this point in time... It will be much safer than out here.'  
She stood up.

The Doctor hesitated and glanced back at the shell of the TARDIS. He knew it was gone, but was still loathed to leave it... never again would it be waiting for him when he got back from what ever stupid adventure he found himself on. He felt like he should bury it or something, give it a funeral and respect…

Shaking his head slowly, the Doctor turned away and glanced down at Fyffe. She smiled up at him and pointed behind her to the West.  
'The city is that way... I think... If we leave now, we should get there by tomorrow,' she said.  
'Ah, wonderful,' said the Doctor glumly, still gazing at the inanimate ship, 'unless we get eaten first that is…'

Fyffe shrugged, 'C'mon, where's your sense of adventure… where's your Dunkirk spirit?' she asked  
'It died with my ship,' said the Doctor.  
He blinked at the familiar words and turned to the girl.  
'What?'

Fyffe smiled at him. 'The city's called Tendra, I've heard it's quite nice… when it's not at war. Let's go.' And without a backwards glance, she walked dreamily off into the trees.

The Doctor stared at her retreating back and tenderly touched his head where it had been hit. He felt resigned at leaving the TARDIS, but under the knowledge that the girl was the only chance he had of making it to the city; he followed her into the forests gloom.

* * *

_A little hint of whats to come:_**_  
"...they would venture out of the city walls and spend a pleasant afternoon crawling through bogs, cess pits, mud, rivers, more mud, the cities sewer flow, and even piles of bear-dung if they could find it, just so that they could say they had had some 'real life' experience..."_**


	5. Chapter 5

_Yello...  
This feels like such a mish-mash to me as I wrote random little sections on completely different days when I was in a variety of moods... so... yeah...  
_

_Let me know what you think, this is the most uncertain I have been so far... not trying to put you off or anything... God god, please still read it!  
_

* * *

Madison was awoken from the realms of sleep in what could be called a very unpleasant manner. What she would have called it would have been a "horrible and sodding annoying way to be woken up." She would have also probably gone on to kick someone hard in the shins just to vent her frustration.

For a small moment, she wondered what had woken her. Then her ears caught on to the fact that she was awake, and started working. A horrible and sickening rumble of a sound hit her.

Flinging herself out of bed and rushing to the window, Madison stared out at the large ball of fire and smoke that billowed up from where the town hall used to be – that is, until it had been blown up.  
Madison groaned to herself.

War...  
It was something that the city went on and on and on about, yet never actually did anything. There was probably over a hundred meetings held over the course of the year which were specifically dedicated to long and pointless discussions on all the plans, and war tactics that would be used, yet nothing was ever decided.

War...  
There was even a small and completely useless army which did drilling, and practiced marching up and down the main street every Thursday afternoon. O_ccasionally_, if the over enthusiastic General was granted permission by the alarmingly lethargic, sloth of a Captain, they would venture out of the city walls and spend a pleasant afternoon crawling through bogs, cess pits, mud, rivers, more mud, the cities sewer flow, and even piles of bear-dung if they could find it, just so that they could say they had had some 'real life' experience.

War…  
The one thing that her city claimed it knew the most about, had studied the art of, run video simulations of, knew _all_ the outcomes, _all _the scenarios, compiled a list off _all_ the possible enemies, and how they would attack, and what weapons they would use, and how they could be beaten… even though there were no other known cities on the entire planet…

War…  
Another booming explosion shook the city, and a pluming mushroom of smoke sprouted from between some distant houses. Madison leaned back from the window as the glass panes rattled violently and swore venomously.

On cue, the city of Tendra sprang into action. From a nearby building came the assembled masses of the army followed promptly by the General, whose eyes were almost popping out from over-enthusiastic excitement, and less promptly by the waddling Captain, who was mopping his giant, red face with a handkerchief. Finally, all those meetings and preparation had paid off – it was time to show what this city could do!

A third explosion blasted apart the nearby buildings. Madison flung herself onto the floor of her flat as her window shattered inwards. She gasped as the fragments of tinkling glass bounced on the floor around her, and then pulled herself upwards to peer cautiously from between the cracked window frame.

The soldiers below were all lying flat on the floor, most were groaning and attempting to pull themselves upwards… for some, it was clear that they would not get up again. As the sounds of the explosion rumbled away, a much more disturbing noise rose from the burning city.

Crying, screaming, and other inaudible noises of confused fear drifted over the remaining buildings as the people of the city began facing the unavoidable consequences of war.

The remaining soldiers, who were still milling around, unsure of what to do, looked up as the echoing screams reached their ears. Then, just as a finial show of Tendra's advanced fighting capabilities, they began sprinting as fast as they could down the street… in the wrong direction.

Madison stared out of the window and shook her head. So much for the sanctuary within the city walls…  
Below her, the street was already filling with people, all shouting, all running, all with fear in their eyes and suffering snapping at their heels.

From the vantage point of her second level flat, Madison watched the scene beneath with a slow developing horror. The things that were happening, other than being immensely pathetic and embarrassing to her civic pride where the soldiers were concerned, were completely and utterly terrifying.

As much as she tried, she found that she could not tear her gaze away.

* * *

'Fyffe...'  
The voice came from behind her quietly, almost timidly. She turned to look at the Doctor, waiting for a response.  
'You do know where you're going...right?' he said. 

Fyffe smiled at him and pointed in the direction that they had been heading in for the last seven hours.  
'That way,' she said simply.  
The Doctor stared past her hand which, since she wasn't looking at, Fyffe has aimed at a nearby tree.  
'Lovely,' he said, 'just checking.'

The young girl's eyes bored into his face in a disconcerting manner and she seemed to be considering something. Finally, she said: 'What are you?'  
This got an immediate response from the Doctor as his face adopted a look of complete shock, then contorted into a more mild mannered confusion. Of all the things he expected her to say, it hadn't been that, although... he could understand why she would ask it... he had unexpectedly arrived in a screaming and wildly smoking blue box...

Seeing the Time Lord frown as he considered what to say next, Fyffe shook her head and spoke again.  
'Wait...I have an idea...'  
She picked up a twig and looked at it thoughtfully.  
There was silence.  
And a long pause.  
Then, there was an even longer pause.  
Which was elaborately filled up with some lavishly thick silence.

'...Yes?' said the Doctor finally.  
He was starting to become increasingly confused at the girl. There was nothing in particular that _should_ confuse him, she seemed pretty straight forward - humanoid, female, young - but it was her general, overall... Fyffeness which made absolutely no sense what so ever.

Fyffe looked up from the twig, her face passive and blank.  
'Hhhmm?' she said.  
'You said you had an idea, and then you started staring at a twig...'  
'Yes,' said Fyffe.  
'Right,' said the Doctor.  
'This twig here,' said Fyffe.  
'Yes,' said the Doctor.  
'It's from that tree there.'  
He glanced upwards. There was certainly a tree, a large and completely uninteresting tree, the same tree that Fyffe had pointed to… The Doctor considered it. Yes… it was definitely a tree.  
'Do you want it?'  
'What?'  
Fyffe smiled warmly as she held up the twig for his inspection.  
'Uh, no,' he said.  
'That's alright, I'll keep it.'  
The Doctor blinked. 'Fantastic.'  
She nodded. 'Yep.'  
Another pause.  
Finally, the Doctor said: 'Fyffe, why were you staring at a twig?'  
She shrugged. 'I don't know.'

* * *

As the dying noises of the explosion wafted dreamily over the city, Madison hopped around her room, one leg stuffed down a backwards pair of trousers, one foot with an unwashed sock still clinging determinedly to it. Overbalancing and finally tripping on a casually discarded piece of toast, Madison fell over with a loud shriek. From outside, the screams rose in pitch and frequency. The city was burning to the ground...

When she finally convinced her various pieces of clothing to sort themselves out and actually fit onto her, most of the city had been engulfed in a layer of dust and dirt that had been thrown up. She rushed to the door of her pokey little flat, stumbled outside and tried to take in what she could see...


	6. Chapter 6

_Hmmm... more angst ridden than usual... well, you can't expect it to be a light hearted romp the entire time can you? Not with Loss, Pain and War hiding round the corner and giggling to themselves._

_Ah well, it will return to normality soon, I promise. There was just a few things I had to clear up first :)  
Hope I'm still doing alright... thanks again for all your kind words.  
_

_oJESSo_

* * *

The Doctor sat on a log and stared morosely at his foot, which, as it was covered in mud, looked more like it would be happier attached to the leg of a Marshman than a Time Lord…

He glanced at Fyffe who was revolving slowly on the spot and smiling to herself. Occasionally, she would stop to stare at a seemingly random direction within the jumble of trees. The Doctor guessed that she was trying to work out where they were going. He didn't bother to ask her, he was almost afraid of what kind of answer she would give him.

'Fyffe, will you stop doing… whatever it is you're doing.'  
She completed her pivot slowly until she was facing him and sat down suddenly, cross-legged, on the ground. When she looked up at him, she realized that something was not happening how it would normally happen. The Doctor was looking at her with a confused jumble of expressions that clearly expressed his total incomprehension of the girl.

'Don't worry,' she said in what she hoped was a soothing tone, 'you'll feel better soon… about loosing your box and your shoe and everything.'

'It's not a box,' said the Doctor defensively, 'it was my ship! The last of it's kind, my last link to my people, my home, my vessel, my guide, my translator, my security blanket, my escape from danger, my, my… sort of friend, my _life_!'

Fyffe nodded as if she understood. 'And what about your shoe, was that just a shoe?' She looked down at his feet. 'You've always got another one, I suppose.'

The Doctor followed her gaze and glanced back down at his feet. After staring at them for a moment, he wiggled his toes and let out a small laugh.  
'Yeah, good point,' he said, and Fyffe beamed at him.

A long time ago, a strange conclusion had come to the Doctor that he should never ask to much, or anything if he could help it, from those that he met. Since losing everything, he never felt as inclined to talk about who he was, and had reasoned, that he shouldn't expect people to talk about themselves either.

He watched as Fyffe pulled herself up and once again began revolving on the spot. She had already made it clear that she did not want to talk about herself, but it didn't stop his constantly running mind from trying to understand her better.

'This way,' said Fyffe triumphantly, and set off between two trees that looked exactly like every other tree. The Doctor wondered how she could tell.

It didn't seem that long ago since they had left the empty remains of the TARDIS, but he realized, as he trudged through the dense bracken after Fyffe, that it had almost been a full day. It hadn't meant much to him, he could easily go a day without sleep, but it did make him wonder about the blond haired, bare-footed girl who was leading him.

There was no doubt in the fact that Fyffe, of all the thousands of life forms he had met, was single handedly the most confusing and least understandable. She had even said herself that she didn't think in the right way…whatever that meant, but…

Fyffe stopped again and considered a large bush in front of her. The Doctor came to a halt next to her and watched. She was deep in thought, and he saw a slow smile creep across her face.

…for all of Fyffe's strangeness, and for all that the Doctor simply couldn't comprehend about her, there was little that could actually make you dislike the girl. She seemed to accept what was told to her in a happy and mild mannered way. From what he had seen, she appeared to be the elite optimist and, despite the Doctor's inner turmoil of trying to find a city and do… _something_, it was clear that Fyffe felt some sort of connection to him. Maybe it was because she found him, rescued him from under his ship.

His ship…

Once again, for a split second, he relived that jolting sensation as the living essence of the ship was torn away from its body and lost forever…_ The force that jolted forward…painfully, angrily and with such power, that it was gone in an instant…_

'There all gone now,' the Doctor mused to himself. 'The entire TARDIS species… extinct.

Standing in front of him, the girl's face suddenly paled slightly and, though she said nothing and continued to gaze stonily at the bush, she began to nervously fidget with the hem of her clothing. It was the first time that the Doctor had seen her act with anything other than her strange and serine calmness.

He took a hesitant step forward, suddenly intent. 'You know what a TARDIS is?'  
She nodded mutely.  
The Doctor felt his pulse quicken.  
'What else do you know?'

* * *

The city shuddered.  
Madison pounded along the broken street, her breath erupting in staggered gasps as she tried to force herself to keep running. It had only been and hour since the bombing had started, and already she had seen much more than she ever wanted to see again.

It wasn't just the fact that it was the city that was being destroyed – Madison had always felt that it was pathetic enough anyway – it was the homes, the families, the _people_ who were suffering and dying… and it was horrific.

She skidded around a corner and was nearly bowled over by a clump of screaming people. A large building had collapsed right across the road and the roaring flames were already beginning to lick at the surrounding buildings. Madison flung a hand up to shield her face from the heat and stumbled backwards.

One, single sob escaped her. From within the collapsed building, she could hear the cries and screams of those trapped within, and there was _nothing _that she could do. The smoke from the fire was beginning to engulf the entire street in chocking black fumes, and Madison desperately tried to keep her vision clear.

With streaming eyes, she squinted upwards at the building on her left, and saw with horror that it was beginning to fall…  
'Run!' she screamed to the street in general.

Through her hazy vision she saw people begin to move, screaming and stumbling past each other and through the rubble. Madison turned and sprinted away, not daring to look back, and not able to shut out the ground-breaking, bone-crunching thud of the building as it fell.

Not sure what she was doing, but to afraid to stop running, she ran through the blackened, deserted city centre and towards the large city gates that marked the only way out of Tendra.

* * *

There was silence within the forest.  
Very slowly, the Doctor walked forward until he stood in front of the girl.

'Fyffe?' he said carefully, 'what do you know about the TARDIS?' She shook her head quickly and he gripped her shoulders, 'Fyffe! Please!'

Still twisting her clothing, she looked up. There was a sense of surprise nestled within her eyes, as though she hadn't expected the Doctor to act this way, and couldn't understand why he would appear so anxious.

'I'm sorry, Doctor,' she said, 'but I don't know anything.'  
He opened his mouth to speak, eyes desperately searching for something within the girl's face that he could attach himself to. Fyffe realized that it clearly meant a great deal to him, there was something that he needed, but could never truly have.

'I heard you say the name,' she explained quickly, 'when you were unconscious… I, I,' a brief look of inner turmoil flashed across her face, 'I don't know what it means, but it's what you said.'

He stared at her, then, very slowly, lent backwards with a forlorn look etched into his face. She watched him, overwhelmed by pity for the man, and wished sincerely that she could have given him a better explanation.

'Sorry,' he said, removing his grip on her and plunging his hands into his pockets, 'I thought… cause you knew the name, that you would…' he sighed, 'I dunno… be a Time Lord or something.'

He looked at the floor and didn't see Fyffe gaze at him with an unreadable expression on her face.  
'Is that what you are? A Time Lord?'  
'Yep,' he said gloomily.  
'And the TARDIS is…?'  
'Well, it was my ship...all gone now.'

Fyffe bit her lip, 'what happened to it?'  
'I… it… it's gone…' the Doctor rubbed his tired eyes, 'the part of it that was living, the heart of the TARDIS, was somehow separated from the physical elements of the vessel… like if you were separated from your soul…'

Fyffe stared at him intensely, and then nodded her head in understanding. 'I'm sorry,' she said, 'I didn't mean to give you hope… it must be hard to loose those you care about… but, why would you think I'm one of you?'

He shrugged half heartedly, 'maybe the way you acted, or that you said something familiar… probably, it was just me wanting you to be one.' He sighed, 'I shouldn't have tried to convince myself. It would have been blatantly obvious to me if you have been a Time Lady… even a Gallifreyan, I would have been able to tell.'

The large cloud of Gloom that had settled over the pair, cast its dreary shadow from above. Fyffe, shook her head and pursed her lips together. If someone else had been watching, they would have thought that it almost looked like the girl was hiding something. In a vague attempt to cheer the self confessed Time Lord up, she pulled the twig from behind her ear and once again offered it to him.

He gave it a cautious look.  
'It's okay,' he said, 'I really really don't want your twig.'  
Fyffe ran her eyes over it thoughtfully.'It's a nice twig,' she hazarded.  
The Doctor gave her an encouraging nod. 'Yes, yes it is. Look, Fyffe–'  
'Maybe I should think about a name…'

Without warning, a large, rumbling explosion broke the forests usual stodgy silence. Below their feet, the soft ground gave a weak tremble and through the trees could be seen an intense flash of burning light.

As the Doctor spun around, Fyffe looked up from the twig.  
'Ah,' she said conversationally, 'I think it's that way.'

* * *

The gates to the city were the largest and, considering what a slack rabble of an army they had, probably the only defense that Tendra had. The open space in front of the gates was a confused jumble of shouting people who had clearly thought of the same plan as she: get out while you still can.

The thick, dark smoke that had sprouted from the raging fires had already begun to waft itself lazily over the city. But it was not as bad as the scene that met Madison's eyes as she gazed speechlessly at the gate.

Where the giant metal structures had once stood, was now only a gaping hole. They had been blasted apart and, even now, were still burning fiercely. It was clear from the smell that some sort of petrol bomb had been used… and this meant that the fire was so ferocious; there was no way of getting past it.

People were coughing and moving away from the blackened metal structures, and, even as she stood and stared in horror, the street before her began to empty. Madison, however, found that she could not move, only stand and stare with a silent horror.With the fire raging over the gates, it meant that they were trapped. There was nothing they could do to escape the bombs.

' Madison!' bellowed a voice.

As another cloud of chocking smoke engulfed the street, she spun around and saw Ryan sprinting towards her. Madison was almost relieved to see his silhouette emerge from the dust and took a few hesitant steps towards him as he staggered to a halt, panting heavily.

The ground shook again.  
'What the _hell_ is going on?' Madison screamed. Ryan's anxious beard squinted at her through the dust as she gripped his arm. 'Why isn't the city doing something?'

Hazily in front of her, Ryan shook his head in silent shock.  
'Anything!' Her face pleaded to his.

'There's no point being here, Mad,' he said, his voice strained with fear, 'the factory's been bombed, no work today.' He let out a hysterical laugh, then his face turned ashen.  
'My house has gone,' he said, and for once, Madison saw past his beard and looked into his glazed eyes. 'My, my house… and Sarah…' he let out a muffled sob, 'she's gone…'

'Ryan? Ryan!' Madison looked around desperately and shook him by the shoulders as he openly wept. It was… a disgusting sight, and filled her with such a sickening sense of helplessness, that she didn't know what to do.

Blinking the ash and smoke from her eyes, she peered into Ryan's face. 'Ryan, what is _happening_? I've come through the main square and there's just people screaming… where's the army? Where's the shelter where we can all hide? Who's fighting back, whose _defending_ us?'

Ryan said nothing, unable to communicate anything beyond the deep set pain and loss that he now felt.  
'Ryan!'  
Her voice was lost in the almighty force of another explosion. It was so close by, that the ground pitched and lurched with a sickening gut-wrenching force. Both Madison and Ryan fell, landing heavily, and feeling the hot lick of flame wafting over their backs.

Madison was first to rise and she pulled herself to her feet, trying to understand what had just happened. There were random lumps of rubble strewn around, some still smoking from the blast. Her head was ringing and everything appeared muffled and confused.

She began to stagger through the smoke and dust, trying to find some fresh air to clear her head. Through dimmed ears, she made out the unpleasant noise of cracking masonry and, as she peered upwards through the smoke, she saw the city walls begin to drop towards her…


	7. Chapter 7

_Soooooooory, its been a while... I've been a bit tied up heh heh heh. Oh, not literally but still... a bit hard to untangle myself._

_Hooray! The two tales of my story finally become one. Now it gets gooood :P_

_Enjoy it... _

* * *

_Oh, god_, thought Madison desperately, _I'm going to get smooshed to death._ She blinked up at the lump of wall, and watched faintly as it grew larger and larger and came closer and closer. She realized later, that she must have looked like a paralyzed rabbit that was staring down the headlights of a car. It wasn't a comforting thought.

Somewhere far behind her, Ryan staggered to his feet. He was still sobbing uncontrollably and, as he stumbled forward, he swung his head through the smoke searching for the face he vaguely remembered through his grief stricken state.

'M-Mad?' he gulped.

The ground lurched again and sent him sprawling. From somewhere buried in the depths of the smoke he heard a muffled scream and, for a fleeting moment, he thought it was Sarah…

Hardly sure why he was doing it, Ryan pulled himself upright and staggered forward again, but it was not long before he was gasping for breath and chocking as he sucked in lungfulls of hot smoke. Falling to his knees, he coughed violently and wiped away his streaming eyes with his hand. Through the dust, he could vaguely make out the flickering inferno of the fire.

Somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind he was dimly aware that through the confusion and his semi-conscious state, he must have wandered towards the burning gate. However, before he could come to any more conclusions, he saw something that made his heart race in panic.

Directly ahead of him, he could see a strange dark shape from within the smoke and, even as he squinted at it, he realized it was that of a human figure. It was standing perfectly still, head tilted upwards, and staring at the large blocks of rubble and masonry that were plunging down towards them. Ryan coughed again, even through the haze; he could recognize Madison's proud and upright form.

'Mad…' Ryan croaked, but his voice was barely audible above the cackling flames. As much as he felt it was somehow wrong, he found that he could not keep his eyes upon her. He could not watch someone he knew be killed.

With a snarl of effort, he pulled himself up and screamed her name.

_Oh, god_… _I'm going to get smooshed to death…_

Somewhere far behind her, Madison could hear Ryan shouting and shrieking. She wasn't even aware of him staggering towards her blurry form, wasn't even aware that she was putting others in danger. As she blinked stupidly up at the growing rubble like a constipated Alkoden, she wasn't even aware of her own internal thought track that went something like this:

_Oh, god… I'm going to get smooshed to death…  
That's a real bugger…  
If I had any sense, I would try to run…  
I'm not going to, am I…?  
No… that would be far too intelligent…  
And I apparently have the same number of brain cells as a Mareep…  
Or worse, as an ameba...  
Or worse, as an ameba sat on a Mareep…_

Of course, this train of thought meant nothing to Madison, as all she could do was stand mutely and stare up at the large, grey lumps of distorted rock as they plummeted towards her.

It was at this point, that a pleasant and unexpected incident occurred. With a sudden, heavy force hitting her from behind, Madison felt Ryan plummet into the back of her. Both bodies jolted forward and landed heavily, entangled in the dust.

'Get up!' a voice shouted at her.

Madison remained sprawled in the dust slowly opening and closing her mouth. Her body was still in the midst of pointedly ignoring her brain, and she found she could not move. Though in answering aid to her shock and confusion, she felt strong hands grip under her arms, and her body being forcibly lifted.

'Move,' Ryan said, 'now.'

His voice had a strange blend of urgency, and complete calm that were tightly mixed together in an authoritative tone. It penetrated through the foggy bewilderment of Madison's head, and she began to respond. As she struggled upright, she looked up, and came face to face with someone who was very clearly, under no uncertainty, and without a single doubt _not_ Ryan.

The Doctor's eyes stared back at her, glassy from the smoke and ash, and screwed up in a forcible look of determination. Without waiting for a response, he gripped her arm and pulled her through the smoke. From behind, there was a loud rumble and more of the city wall began to fall.

'Run! Run!'

Madison screwed up her eyes and stumbled after the strange man. He seemed to know where he was going and she was to bewildered to argue. But before long, the thick, heavy ash had begun to cling to the inside of her lungs and she began to choke. The Doctor puller her harder and they stumbled through the impenetrable dust-cloud.

After what seemed like an age, the man leading her stopped and allowed her to drop heavily to the ground. With her head hanging limp, and barely supported by her arms and knees, Madison coughed and swallowed huge lungfulls of fresh, sweet air. The Doctor stood above her, wiping his soot filled eyes and very slowly took a deep breath – the first one he had had in over five minutes.

On a collapsed pillar someway behind, sat Fyffe, and by her feet lay the unconscious body of Ryan. The Doctor turned to look at her, as she slumped quietly over her knees staring at the ground.

'You okay?' he asked.

Fyffe looked up, smiled, nodded, and replied in a slightly hoarse voice: 'that's the first time that I have ever had hot ash and smoke circling through my respiratory system.'

The Doctor gave her a half hearted smile and nodded towards the unconscious man at her feet. 'You pulled him out of the smoke on your own?'

Fyffe smiled but offered no explanation as to how she managed it. Once again, the Doctor felt that irritated pang of wanting to know more about the girl, but once again, he held himself back, remembering the warning look she had given him.

'You were in there a long time,' she commented.  
The Doctor shrugged. 'Respiratory bypass system,' he explained.  
Fyffe looked mildly interested. 'How long can you go without breathing, then?'  
'Oh…I, I don't know. I never really wanted to find out.'

Fyffe said nothing more but wiped her sooty eyes as the Doctor had done, and indicated behind the Time Lord with her head. The Doctor frowned and then turned around to see what Fyffe had meant. Standing behind him, was Madison, who was disheveled and dirty and fixing them with a look of complete incomprehension.

'Hello!' said Fyffe and she waved calmly at the woman.

Madison blinked slowly and swayed slightly on the spot. The Doctor looked as though he was going to rush forward and help her, but just before he could do anything, another rally of explosions began shaking the city and everyone was thrown flat onto the ground.

The earth shook; the whole world seemed to shake as Madison buried her face into her hands and preyed for the tremors to stop. She was faintly aware of the unknown man lying on the floor somewhere near her, and faintly aware that he was yelling something to the blond girl.

As the onslaught of noise and shuddering seemed to dim, she risked looking up and saw the man and girl both lifting Ryan away from the rubble. The nearby building that had once been the city bank was beginning to crack and tremble at its foundations, and Madison realized that they were trying to move him away from the danger.

She pulled herself unsteadily to her feet and began stumbling after them, so temporarily confused and bewildered, that she was almost like a lost sheep that simply follows the herd. The man who had saved her was taller than she, and had quite large, untidy hair which stuck up at odd angles and was partially coated in dried mud. His pinstripe suite that he wore also had the same layer light brown mud and was topped off with a light coating of dust and ash. Momentarily stopping, and running her eyes up and down the man, Madison wondered why he only had one shoe.

A sudden, high pitched scream broke the foggy air and penetrated itself through the dust cloud, reverberating off the remaining city wall that still stood. Madison saw the Doctor lower Ryan's feet and spin around, searching, wide-eyed, for the source of the scream.

Inside the collapsing bank, and leaning so far out of a broken window that it looked like he would fall out, stood a pale faced and desperate looking boy. His arms were flung outwards and he was shrieking hysterically as the building lurched. Already, fire was beginning to lick its way up the outside of the red brick walls and smoke was starting to pour out of the window above the child's head.

Madison stared in horrified shock at the boy… she recognized him. There was a faint memory somewhere in her head of that same child dashing around in a small gassy garden. And now he had lost the beauty, and had only the wrath of nature to contend with.

From behind her, The Doctor took two large strides forward and spun Madison around, gripping her shoulders.

'Listen to me very carefully,' he said, his brown eyes glimmering with the reflected flames, 'go home. Don't try and be a hero, don't try and help, just go home or find somewhere safe to be, and _stay there_. Got it?'

Madison blinked at him, wondering who he was. Over his shoulder, she could see the blond haired girl slowly lower Ryan to the ground and stare at her with blank interest. The Doctor gave her a slight shake and she refocused her attention back to him.

'Did you hear me?' he said.  
Madison nodded slowly and he let her go.  
'Go,' said the Doctor. 'It's not safe here. Go.'

Very slowly, she turned and began to walk away. She didn't dare look back; there was something in the man's eyes that had frightened her. As she began to speed up, there was another loud explosion and the ground lurched again.

'Go on!' came the booming echo of the man's voice.

Madison let out a single sob of shock, as she stumbled and righted herself. Then, still without looking back, she gathered herself up, and ran.

Fyffe stood with Ryan at her feet and watched the woman sprint away. The Doctor had already dashed towards the crying boy but Fyffe could see that there was no hope for him. Amidst the dust, dirt and hollow explosions, a concentrated frown etched itself onto her face. She knew that she needed answers, _specific answers, _and through the Doctor and this woman, she knew she could get them.

Madison flung open the door of her flat, stormed through, and slammed it shut behind her. Once she was inside she let out a deep breath, lent back and thumped her head against the wooden panels.

All she wanted to do was forget what had just happened, try to force the image of the falling masonry out of her head, and forget the utter abandonment that had poured out of Ryan's glassy eyes… she lifted forwards her head and let it thump backwards again. As much as she wanted to, the distorted sound of her own scream, the feeling of oncoming death, and the unfamiliar, concentrated face of that unknown man… they would not vanish from her mind.

Another faint explosion echoed through the city, but it was to far away to be properly registered. Madison groaned. The accumulation of everything that had happened to her weighed her down and left her feeling sick and exhausted.

She stumbled over to her sink and plunged her face into the cold water that streamed out of the tap. When she straightened up and turned around, her already twitchy senses were pushed into overdrive as a sharp, and sudden bang shot through her flat. Spinning around and nearly dieing of a heart attack, Madison stared as her front door was violently flung open.


	8. Chapter 8

_Some more of that fast, confusing and utterly pointless conversation that I enjoy writing so much :)  
_

_Its all coming together now!!  
Bless Madison, she tries so hard...  
_

_Anyways, enjoy!_

* * *

Recoiling, Madison flattened herself against her kitchen counter and blinked in the bright sunlight that streamed from the open doorway. Silhouetted against the white light, and smiling in an oddly contented manner, stood the blond haired girl for earlier. Madison blinked at her and let her mouth drop slowly open. 

Fyffe walked into the flat, past Madison, and through the kitchen. Following behind her was the strange man who had saved her life from the falling masonry, ash and smoke. Unlike the girl though, he did not enter the flat, but paused in the doorway and gazed stonily at the burning city outside.

'You haven't got anything to eat, do you?' the blond girl asked, and she began rummaging through the cupboards at the back of the flat. Madison gave her a look of complete disbelief and glanced at the man in the doorway. Since returning home, she had lost her glazed confusion and a harder look had settled upon her face.

'I'm sorry,' she said, without sounding it at all, 'who the _hell_ are you two, _what_ are you doing in my house, and _why_ the hell are you eating my food without even asking?'

Fyffe glanced up with her hand buried deep in a packet of flour. As if in slow motion, and with her eyes never leaving Madison's face, she drew her hand up out of the packet, raised it to her face and gave her flour stained fingers a slow lick.

There was a long pause.  
Under the shocked stare of the other woman, Fyffe shrugged delicately, before taking a secondary finger-lick and returning her attention to the packet with interest.

Once again, Madison turned to the man, assuming he was connected to this impossibly strange child, and trying, in a futile attempt, to get him to explain the situation. Still leaning against the doorway, he shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and turned around slowly, looking straight at Madison.

'That child,' he said slowly, 'did you know him?'

Madison frowned. For a moment, she had seen an unsettling flicker in the man's brown eyes which echoed what she had seen before. There was something buried deep into them, like a raging fire there; a power and an intense restlessness. This man had dark demons inside of him, and was fighting them every step of the way.

She realized that he was waiting for a response.  
'Yes, I knew him,' she said. 'Not very well… but his dad was a sweeper in the factory where I work.'

She wondered for a moment why she had answered the man when she had so clearly seen something in his eyes that she didn't like. She didn't know him, didn't _want_ to know him… but…

But there was something in his face that was so… _desperate_. Underneath the fire and demons nestled a need for companionship and understanding. Past the rage of the Time Lord, past the fury, the mercilessness... the Doctor's infectious optimism and his unquenchable desire to help, to simply _live,_ shone out.

'I couldn't save him,' the man said quietly as the screams from the burning city rose behind him. 'Sorry.'

Madison opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything, the man suddenly ran his fingers through his hair and scanned the room.  
'You don't happen to have a shoe, do you?'

The question was so unexpected, that Madison took a step backwards out of surprise. She began to get the feeling that this man was almost as complex as the strange girl behind her. In a split second, he had taken all that rage and sorrow, all the darkness, and simply locked it away. She glanced down at her feet and, as he followed her gaze, the man smiled slightly and shook his head.

'I meant a spare one,' he said, '… no? Ah, well, never mind,' he lifted his eyes from Madison's face and called out to the girl. 'Fyffe, put that down… I'm sure flour isn't good for you.'

There was a thump as the opened flour packet landed heavily onto the floor. The Doctor face flashed a disapproving look that was so subtle it was barely noticeable, he then returned his attention back to the woman, giving her a cheery smile. She mouthed silently back at him in a way that reminded him strongly of a Langurian Human Harp fish… except that she wasn't trying to eat her own tail.

' – ' she began.  
'I'm the Doctor by the way, and this is Fyffe,' he said and gestured towards the young girl, who was now holding a pineapple at arms length and giving it a wary look.

'Oh…' said Madison, '… um,' she shook herself and tried to regain some control over the situation. 'What the hell are you doing in my house?'

The Doctor paused and frowned to himself. 'Dunno. We went to your makeshift hospital… and then I was following Fyffe. I guess she was following you.'

Madison spun around at the girl, 'why were you following me?'  
Fyffe looked up from her examination of the pineapple, 'because you knew where you were going, and we did not,' she said simply.

'Ah, yes,' said the Doctor scratching his earlobe nonchalantly, 'we just arrived; been on a bit of a jungle adventure for the last day or so.'  
Madison frowned at him. 'You were in the jungle?'

The Doctor opened his mouth to reply but Madison cut across him.  
'Wait, wait,' she said, 'you said you were called Doctor?' she gave him a scrutinizing glance and he shrugged, 'and this is… who?'  
'Fyffe,' said Fyffe.  
'And she's, what, you're daughter?'

Fyffe suddenly laughed so hard that she dropped the pineapple. The Doctor gave her a puzzled look as though he himself could not understand the strange child. At least, no more than Madison or any other sane person could.

'I'll take that as a no, then,' said Madison, trying hard to not be offended by the girl's sudden outburst. 'Look, I don't want to be rude–'  
'You haven't told us who you are,' said Fyffe from behind her.  
'She's called Madison,' said the Doctor. Madison turned and stared at him with a horrified expression. He smiled reassuringly.  
'It's on your name-tag,' he explained gently and nodded at her, 'on your overalls that you're wearing, work clothes are they?' He shifted slightly as though in discomfort. 'Are you sure you don't have a spare shoe kicking about?'

Madison shook her head, 'wait–'  
Fyffe began laughing hysterically. The Doctor raised his eyebrows and shot her a glance.  
'Do you get it?' Fyffe asked breathlessly.  
'What?' he replied.  
'But–' began Madison.  
'You said kicking about.'  
'Right…'  
'You were talking about a shoe…'  
Madison opened her mouth as the Doctor plunged his hands back into his pockets. A slow smile was spreading over his face. 'Yeah?' he said coyly.  
The girl looked like she was about to explode. 'And you said _kicking about_!'  
The Doctor grinned, 'you're insane, Fyffe.'  
'Hang on a moment–' Madison interjected.

The Doctor turned to face her again and gave her an annoyingly innocent smile, as though everything was perfectly normal. 'Sorry,' he said, 'you were saying?'  
Madison swallowed, 'Well,' she began.  
'What's this?' said Fyffe from behind her, holding the pineapple upside-down.

'Oy, put that down,' said the Doctor, suddenly switching from insane, happy-go-lucky man, to stern guardian, 'it's not yours… and besides, I know there are some breeds of pineapple that explode if you handle them to roughly.'  
Fyffe glanced suspiciously at the pineapple then carefully laid the innocent looking fruit on the floor, before taking several large steps backwards.

'Stop!' shouted Madison.

In one single movement, the Doctor and Fyffe stopped. They glanced at each other and then looked at Madison with interest as she pointed first at one, then at the other.  
'_Why_ do you only have one shoe, and why do _you_ have a twig behind your ear?'

The answers came back abruptly.  
'I lost the other one.'  
'I don't know.'  
Something deep inside Madison's mind creaked slightly under the extreme pressure, and then proceeded to snap.

'Fantastic!' she cried sarcastically. 'No, really! That's just brilliant, isn't it?! Bloody BRILLIANT!' She began pacing furiously around the room. 'You two,' she vented, 'I, I don't even know who the _hell_ you are! And you come in here and… and _eat my food_ and ask me about _shoes_?!' She arrived at the small window and pointed venomously out of it. 'There is a war going on outside! My city is being _bombed_, people are _dying_… _we_ might all die, cause there's _no_ way outta here, we're just trapped like stinking rats! You're not even _from_ this city, for all I know, you could be the enemy! Now, you, you… you just _get out of my house_!'

In her fury, she began pushing the Doctor towards her door, hoping that the girl would simply follow him. The Doctor gave her a worried look that appeared to be tinged with fear. When she was angry, Madison was like a bulldog going through PMS. He didn't resist her shoving and, as he was ushered away, he held up his hands to show his submission, gripped the door handle and swung it open.

Then he stopped.  
Standing behind him, Madison tried to force his body through the doorframe, but he did not move.  
'Get out!' she wined. 'Seriously, I don't even know who you are, just leave me alone!'

Fyffe drifted up behind the Doctor and gazed out through the door.  
'Oh, look,' she said and pointed upwards.

Falling through the sky in almost a lazy manner was a long grey cylinder. If the cylinder had attended a fancy dress party, then people would have guessed it to be some kind of missile or bomb. The cylinder would have smiled and been proud, even a little smug, of how realistic its costume was… it would also have probably ended up getting so drunk that it spent the next day with its head down the toilet throwing up.

Unfortunately, it wasn't at a fancy dress party. Unfortunately, it wasn't in fancy dress. The Doctor stared at it with a strangely disappointed expression.

The cylinder was, in fact, a _real_ missile and was destined to hit the city of Tendra with a large, loud and probably quite impressive explosion – at least impressive for anyone who didn't happen to be blown up.

The Doctor blinked at the sky.  
'Ah,' he said...


	9. Chapter 9

_Hooray!_

_I forgot to mention in my previous chapter, but something that I love so much about the Doctor, is his ability to manipulate a conversation, to use reverse psychology in order to get the information or help that he needs. So.. expect a lot of that within this wee tale. :)_

_I have a slight worry that this chapter is a bit confusing... to much variety of emotion being displayed at the same time. It's probably just paranoia, but let me know anyway.__ Comments are always appreciated_

_Thanks muchly  
_

* * *

The Doctor slammed the door shut and sprinted back into the living room. He grabbed Fyffe by the arm and pushed her into Madison, before forcing them both onto the floor and huddling protectively over them. There wasn't even time for either of the females to think or argue about what he had done, because a few seconds later, the door was blown off its hinges. Recoil

Behind the blasted piece of wood, came a very loud sound: the kind of sound that would occur if a large clump of noise was rolled into a ball, and smashed into another ball of noise. Whereupon, both balls of noise would promptly explode. Basically… it was very very loud.

'What was _that_!' screamed Madison.   
The Doctor sprang upwards and began pulling piles of books of the nearby bookshelf. 'Uh…' he said, 'well, it sounded to me like a very loud sound.'

'What?'   
'It was an explosion!' the Doctor shouted at her, 'I understand you're getting a lot of them at the moment!'   
'Well… yes! We're at war! But, what exploded?!'

The Doctor shook his head and began to open books at random, flickering through the thick, glossy pages.   
Fyffe pulled herself upwards and drifted towards a nearby window that was framed with disfigured and twisted lumps of glass. As she stared out of it, she said; 'that building next door, the one that was already on fire… it looks like a factory. It's been hit again.' Unseen by the other two, she narrowed her eyes at the burning building and glowered, 'they must be trying to hit any kind of big building, anything that could be an easy target.'

Wrenching her eyes away from the frantic Doctor, Madison gave a concerned look at the back of Fyffe's head. It was the first thing that the girl had said that hadn't sounded insane and, like the Doctor had done, she realized that there was more depth to Fyffe than she had previously thought. She briefly wondered why the girl had a sudden hardness to her voice as she spoke about _them…_

From behind, there came a loud thump as the Doctor snapped shut a large book and threw it away over his shoulder, muttering to himself.   
'Hey!' said Madison.

'Listen, Madison,' the Doctor said rapidly, 'I need to find out about this place, this planet, this city, other cities… you must have books with that kind of stuff, surely?'   
Madison nodded, 'well, yeah I suppose. I don't know where they are though.'

The Doctor shot her a pained expression. 'Okay… fine. Just grab some books and get searching then!'   
He began racing around in front of Madison with such energy, that Madison was sure he was going to have a heart-attack. She rubbed her eyes and, once again, tried to make sense of what had just happened. From somewhere behind her, a leather bound journal came happily wizzing over hear head and was smoothly caught by the Doctor. He opened it at random, ran his finger over the page and closed the book with a thwack.

'Nope,' he said, 'no good,' and he lobbed the book back through the air. Madison spun around and saw Fyffe catch the book with the same fluidity and ease as the Doctor. Both had an incessant look of determination about their faces and she wondered again if they weren't somehow related. It dawned on her that this strange pair was _still_ in her house, and after all the confusion they had caused, they were now littering her floor with piles of books and papers. She had spent _hours _filing them…!

As though the world was trying to push Madison's patience to the limit, a large chunk of her ceiling abruptly decided to collapse onto the floor. Dusts as debris were suddenly thrown into the air and engulfed the room in a cloud of white powder. After dropping his book in surprise, the Doctor gritted his teeth and snarled at the fresh pile of rubble before glaring up through the hole in the ceiling.

'Stop trying to drop things on me!' he shouted in the general direction of the sky.   
Coming to an abrupt decision, and once again allowing her temper to snap, Madison took thee long strides forward and snatched up the book from the floor, holing it threateningly.

'Get out of my house!' she demanded furiously.   
The Doctor raised his eyebrows at her and glanced again at the pile of rubble. 'It's ruined your carpet,' he commented.   
'It's a nice carpet,' said Fyffe.

The Doctor nodded. 'Made from Erreep wool, is it? That's nice, that is. Using your own recourses… no need to waste all that pollution through long distance trading and all that, who needs all that bargaining and wasted time? Nah, you just need to nip down to your local market and get some freshly grown Erreep wool. I like that: self sufficient.'

Fyffe nodded earnestly and looked down at the carpet. 'Shame…' she said. Madison followed her gaze and shrugged half heartedly.

'It wasn't a particularly expensive carpet,' she said truthfully, 'it's the most simple design you can get and…' she trailed off as she realized that both the Doctor and Fyffe were completely ignoring her. In fact, they weren't even standing next to her anymore. Madison turned and saw them once again rooting through her book self in search of information.

She growled. Never in her life had she found a pair that was so utterly and confusingly rude! Every time she tried to get some form of understanding or control over the situation they just… they just… completely changed the subject and reverse psychology-ied her! It was even more vexing than having a conversation with Ryan's beard!

'You, you! You…!!!!' Madison began.   
Fyffe shook her head at the older woman and nodded towards the Doctor. 'He's muchsmarter that you.'   
'So?!'   
'…so he knows what he's doing.'   
Under the calm surety of the girl, Madison glowered. 'Doing what? What's he doing?' she said.   
Fyffe's face suddenly beamed. 'He's going to save the world,' she stated with complete conviction.

Madison frowned at the girl and fought to regain some control. 'He can't save the world, don't be stupid…' something Fyffe had said suddenly filtered back her mind. 'Wait, how d'you know he's smarter than me?' she demanded. 'You don't even know me!'   
'Sorry,' said the Doctor, still leafing through large books, 'but I am.'   
Madison turned and scowled at him. 'Prove it,' she said.   
The Doctor looked up at her. 'You what?'   
'Prove it,' Madison said again stubbornly. 'Prove you're smarter than me.'

The Doctor looked bewildered and glanced at Fyffe, who shrugged at him. 'Uh,' he said, 'look, can't we just drop this?'   
'No.'   
'Ah,' said the Doctor, 'alright. I'm smarter than you because…' he gestured wildly, as though trying to pull an idea out of the air, '… because I can name every planet that ever existed.'

He looked at Madison, who slowly raised her eyebrows.   
'Right…' she said in complete disbelief. 'And you just have that knowledge in your head do you? Or did you get given it as a Christmas present from you great auntie, the tooth fairy?'

Fyffe let out a short laugh and the Doctor shook his head in impatience. What he wanted to do, right now, was to find out as much as he could about Pericolo so he could help. Not be bombarded with stupid questions and sarcastic comments from a random person who seemed more likely to bite his knees off than to be helpful. He briefly wondered what happened to the times when he would stumble into a situation, and people would just tell him what he wanted to know without all the tedious attitude…

'No,' he said slowly, 'I learnt it in school. That's where we had to learn it; otherwise we wouldn't be able to pass the lower-level exams.'

'Look,' said Madison as the Doctor returned to the books, 'there is _no way_ you could have learned _every_ planet and whatever at _school_. You wouldn't even be able to learn it in your life time.' She looked the Doctor up and down. 'And you're… what? Thirty two? Thirty six?'   
'Nine hundred.'   
He glanced up at her and saw her blink and stop, her mouth slightly open.   
'I'm not human,' explained the Doctor. 

Madison gaped at him. 'Well… obviously! After what you just said…! Course you're not a bloody human, you think I'm _that_ stupid! _I'm_ not even human!'   
'You're not?' Fyffe smiled quizzically, 'then what are you?'

Madison paused, suddenly thrown of her train of thought. 'Well… my ancestors were kind of human, I suppose, but I never really counted as pure human because I'm descended from bio-genetically engineered flesh,' she gave the Doctor a hopeful look as though wanting praise for saying something clever, but the only response she got was for him to straighten up and frown deeply.

Fyffe grimaced. 'That doesn't sound pleasant,' she said.   
In response, Madison shook her head and frowned. 'Stop distracting me!' she shouted. Fyffe shrugged and returned her attention back onto the books. The Doctor stood still, looking expectantly at Madison.

'I was just trying to work out what you are,' Madison continued sullenly. 'There are no other life forms that have ever come to Tendra that have had _that_ long a life span, or can apparently walk through smoke, or ramble on, or act as confusingly as you two,' she shot Fyffe a quick glance, 'or are as weird as you…' she sighed and looked at the Doctor, 'go on then, what are you?'

'I'm a Time Lord.'   
'Right,' said Madison, 'what's that then?'   
The Doctor looked confused. 'It's a… lord… of time,' he said.   
Madison shrugged and turned to Fyffe. 'And you're a…a Time Girl?' she asked.   
Fyffe suddenly looked appalled. 'No!'   
The Doctor groaned and ran his hands roughly through his hair.

'Okay... as much as I'm _loving _this conversation… I really, really need to just find out about this place.' He turned to look at Madison. 'None of these books are going to help are they?'

The woman shrugged and gave her head a quick shake. Fyffe lowered the book she was holding and let it drop to the floor. She watched the human and the Time Lord intensely but kept her mouth firmly shut. Through what the Doctor has said, she knew that information that she so desperately wanted, was what he was so urgently trying to find, and if she just went along with whatever happened… she would get her answers.

In front of her, the Doctor took two steps towards Madison, and spoke to her gently.   
'Look, I understand about your confusion and hostility, and I'm sorry we barged in here and started demanding things. But I've learned that the quicker I find out what I need to know, the faster I can help to fix problems… I just need information. I'm trying to fix this,trying to _help_.'

Madison sighed and fixed the Doctor with an expectant look. 'You did save me…' she said, as though trying to convince herself to help him. 'But, how can you possibly think that you're going to fix all this? We're at war and you're just one man, what can you do?'

The Doctor flashed her with a genuine grin of triumph. 'I'm the Doctor,' he said, 'and if there's one thing I'm good at, among my other countless thousand of talents, it's fixing problems.'   
And he sounded so certain, so sure of himself, that Madison nodded her head slowly. Other than being rude, she had seen no other bad intension from him; it was more like bad timing. She decided to look past the demons in his eyes and help the lonely, desperate man.

'Okay,' she said, 'I better not regret helping you, or you'll be sorry,' the Doctor held up his hands in mock surrender and Madison allowed herself to smile for the first time. 'What kind of things do you want to know?' she asked.

The Doctor lowered his hands and buried them deep into his pockets. 'Anything and everything,' he said. 'Neighboring planets, neighboring cities, exchange rate, when you were founded, list of rulers, family trees, weather patterns, the extent of your ecosystem, phosphate levels in your soil, percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere, planetary anomalies, history, geography, biology, psychology… just something to get me thinking along the right lines.'

Madison gaped at him.   
'I think it would be best if I just took you to the library or something,' she said, 'I'm not even sure I got half of what you just said.'

There was a sudden shuddering of more explosions and the house shook again, creaking in protest. The Doctor glanced up at the ceiling and frowned.   
'As much as I love books,' he said, 'I don't think we have that much time to go through a whole library.'

Madison hurried over to the door and peered outside. 'Our library isn't full of books,' she said over her shoulder, 'its all in a giant data base on a computer… the only problem,' she whipped her head back round the door to look at the Doctor and Fyffe, 'is that it's on the other side of the city.'


	10. Chapter 10

_Ohh, a long one, hey?  
How exciting! At least, it is for me... I hope it is for you._

_Got some more good Doctor/Fyffe moments, some more irritating Madison (but I love her really, cause she adds such a good dynamic to the group) and a brief nod to the wildlife of the planet. _

_Comments are always welcome, I thrive on them :) _

* * *

Streams of sunlight filtered down through the dust clogged air of the city and shimmered in the heat, presenting an almost calming, magical image, if it weren't for the raging fire, fractured buildings and occasion heart rendering scream that issued from beneath. 

Since the primary shock and confusion of the bombing had begun to fade, the city streets had emptied themselves of people in their rush for sanctuary. Only an occasional flicker of life was seen as someone would hurry across a broken street and, even through the scattered bursts of noise from the bombs, Tendra had adopted an almost eerily and desolate personality: a feeling of emptiness and lost hope.

Despite the fact that there appeared to be no sign of any enemy, the Doctor, Fyffe and Madison automatically crept through the deserted streets, keeping close to the edges of the buildings as though they did not want to disturb the strange haunted atmosphere that had seemed to settle.

Pausing at a corner, Madison silently pointed down a long street, indicating the way towards the fabled computer data base. It looked the same as every other road they had come across; dirty, dusty and filled with smoldering lumps of brickwork.

On the world of Pericolo, there were no such things as birds - in fact, the closest thing to a bird upon the planet was a small, strangled looking thing known as a Leaper-Lizard, and it was one of these which was now soaring through the smoky air above Tendra. If it had had half a brain cell, it would have watched with curiosity at the three little black shapes that were winding through the streets below. The one far in the lead was moving at a steady gait, and looked to the lizard like a little golden blob. The figure behind was constantly twisting its blob if short brown hair, as though looking around. Of course, this meant nothing to the Leaper-Lizard as it now swooped lazily above the Doctor and Fyffe, just as they, far below, were oblivious to the sinewy creature in the air above them. The girl stopped in the middle of the road and turned to look at the Doctor.

'I don't know how old I am,' she said spontaneously.

The Doctor paused in confusion and then ran his eyes quickly over her as she stood in front of him. 'You look about… fourteen?'

Just as he had seen her do before, she put her head on one side and twisted her mouth in consideration. As Madison caught up with them, Fyffe shrugged one shoulder and said: 'that means nothing to me,' before wandering off again.

The Doctor watched her with his mouth slightly open and Madison followed her drifting movement, wondering what insane comment she had just missed. As she turned to speak to the Doctor, she realized that he was already halfway down the road, following the girl. She did a small double take and then scuttled after them. As she once again caught up with the Doctor, she began whispered to him in a never ending stream of thought.

'…So, lets see if I can understand this, cause you didn't give me much time to take it all in. You were in your ship, called the Tardin –'

'– TAR_DIS_,' interjected the Doctor.

'That's what I said,' quipped Madison, the Doctor rolled his eyes; 'anyway, your Tardisen broke or something, so you crashed out in the woods and lost your shoe. When you woke up, part of your Tardic was missing which meant that you couldn't fix it… because it was… dead?'

'My _TARDIS, _is… was a living ship. It was _alive_. And the bit of it that made it alive, the heart of the TARDIS, the part that was on a parallel time flux to the vortex, is gone. So now my ship is, well, in simple terms, its dead. Got it?'

Madison face adopted a sarcastically blank expression. 'Yeah,' she said cynically, 'I know. So, _anyway_, as well as finding out your Tardet was dead, you also discovered a blond girl who was sitting on a long and watching you. When you asked her who she was, she paused as though she didn't know, and then told you she was called Fyffe. She then led you off through the forest, picked up a twig, stared at it for a while, and you two had a nice heart to heat talk...'

The Doctor frowned as he pressed his back into the blackened brickwork of a building. The quietness of the street was beginning to pry on his mind.

'Then you arrived here…' the incessant voice of Madison continued. 'God knows how you made it through that burning gate, but I'll put that down to your general Time Lordyness, and after _that_ you saved my life, followed me to my house, ransacking the place while looking for food, shoes and information, and _now_,' she paused for breath, 'you've persuaded me to take you right to the opposite end of the city, into the most civic building we have, down into the hugely important data base, so that you can find out information about this planet and city, so that you and Fyffe can apparently stop this war single handedly.'

The Doctor peered around the corner of the building, then darted his head back round again. He glanced at Madison, 'uh… basically… yeah.'

She shook her head, 'and none of that strikes you as downright stupid or odd?'

In response, the Time Lord shrugged one shoulder and said, 'you should have seen the day I had when I went to Satellite Five.' Madison frowned in confusion and as the Doctor darted around the corner, she was just able to hear him murmur, '_Daleks and Ann-droids and stupid naked Jack._'

Once around the corner, the Doctor found Fyffe standing frozen in front of him, gazing blankly forwards as though deep in concentration. When the Doctor turned to see what she had been looking at, he found his eyes begin to itch and a strange sensation creep over the back of his head, like an icy hand running its fingers through his hair. He frowned and squinted at the giant marble building that loomed up in front of him. Of the whole city, it was the only thing that was beautifully white, clean, and completely un-bombed. A wide grin spread slowly across his face.

'Perception filter!' He said eagerly to Madison as she appeared around the corner, 'Brilliant!'  
'You what?' said Madison slowly. Fyffe said nothing, but frowned at the building.

'Of course, you wouldn't know anything about it, and it would effect you 'cause you know its there, you wantto see it,' the Doctor said, as though he was making perfect sense.  
'What filter thingy?' asked Madison, glancing at the building in confusion.

The Doctor rubbed his eyes, growing used to seeing the looming brickwork. 'A perception filter has been put on this building,' he explained rapidly. 'That means that it alters your perception so you just_don't notice it_. Its what my TARDIS has…had.'

'And the filter doesn't affect me because…?'  
'Because you _know_ that building's there, you probably saw it being built, and because of that, you _want_ to see it.'

Madison nodded, 'and you can see it because you're used to it… because the Tardise had one as well?'

The Doctor beamed at Madison's understanding, frowned at the misuse of the name of his ship, and smiled again at the fact that she was accepting things rather than trying to break his ear drum.

Fyffe stared at the building. 'It's a good defense mechanism, especially if it's the key to important information. But…' she shook her head, not wanting to go on. The Doctor glanced down at her, but when he saw she had nothing more to say, he raised his head to the splendor of the building.

'Shall we?' he asked, grinning widely and indicating with his arm for Madison to proceed.

* * *

After winding their way through the clean, yet deserted halls, and wandering through the maze of stairs, they found themselves in the lowest, deepest corridor of the building, standing in front of a chipped wooden door. 

Madison gingerly gave it a push and it swung easily open with a spine chilling creak. The Doctor and Fyffe stepped into the room and stared blearily around.

'This it?' asked the Doctor.  
'Yep,' said Madison pulling the door ajar behind them.

The room was small, square, and very white. At least, it _had_ been small, square and very white before the years of neglect had sauntered along and kicked it in the face. Now it was just small, square, and a crumbling grey with dust and grime. But despite the smallness, it still managed to look extremely bare and empty. In fact, it put the Doctor in mind of the kind of small, square, white room that mental patients were locked into for their own apparent good. He sighed and his eye was drawn to the little pool of light in the middle of the room where, perched on a wobbly looking desk, sat an old, primitive and extremely dirty computer.

'That's… it?' he said.

Madison had a pinched expression on her face, as though she had been thinking the exact same thing as the Doctor. It wasn't exactly the most impressive thing. In fact, it was downright unimpressive… it was downright _pathetic_ to be truly honest.

'Wow,' said Fyffe blandly and she drifted over to the computer and sniffed at it.

'You know… I would have thought it would have been more, I dunno, exciting than this,' Madison gazed forlornly at the little grey blob of the machine. 'Better guarded or, or _cleaner _or something… it does have all the information ever gathered from this planet on it.'

The Doctor shrugged. 'Sometimes looks can be deceiving,' he said, 'like screwdrivers.' Madison turned and gave him a curious look as he continued. 'You should never doubt a screwdriver; they've got so much potential. And yo-yo's. You should never mess with someone with a yo-yo… imagine the damage it could do.'

'Have you finished?'

Turning towards her, the Doctor gave Madison a resigned look. Behind him, Fyffe lent sharply back from the grey computer and let out a loud sneeze. She wrinkled her nose and the dust from the computer ticked it, then let forward slowly with a concentrated expression on her face. She flicked the machine. To her surprise, the blank screen suddenly lit up and it began coughing and spluttering into life. Tearing his gaze away from Madison, the Doctor's face split into a wide grin.

'That's more like it!' he said, and rushed to sit at the desk. Fyffe stood behind him and gazed at the screen, her blue eyes sparkling with excitement as the Doctor's hand began to scuttle across the keyboard. Madison stood by the doorway and watched, unsure if she wanted to join in.

'I'll, er… I'll just keep watch shall I?' she said at last, and lent out of the room. The corridor that they had come through was unsurprisingly empty, but it gave time for her to collect her thoughts and calm her mind: something which, until now, she had not been able to do. From inside, she could here the continuous clicking of the computer keys and had a brief moment of doubt as she wondered if she was doing the right thing. Then she thought about it harder and realized that she already completely trusted the strange man and even stranger child.

In the small, square, white room, the computer hummed merrily, happy to be doing something after thirty years of simply sitting. Its little screen flickered and crackled as files and lists jumped open to be viewed by two pairs of eyes, one blue and one brown. However, unknown to the little machine, it was doing something unspeakably amazing: it was giving up information that the Doctor didn't quite understand.

'What?' said the Doctor quietly to himself.  
Fyffe leaned over his shoulder. 'What?' she asked.  
The Doctor gazed at the ancient computer screen, and then looked up at the girl as though he only just realized that she was there.

'Hmmm?' he said distractedly.  
'What was all that about then? She asked.  
'What was what?' said the Doctor.  
'That what…' she said, 'what was it?'  
There was a moment's pause where the Doctor looked nonplussed.  
'You what?'  
Fyffe nodded her head towards the screen. 'What for the what,' she explained.  
The Doctor stared hard into her face. 'What?'  
Somewhere from the region of the door, Madison let out a groan and spun around before the tedious conversation could continue any further. 'She wants to know what you were whatting!' she said impatiently.

'Oh,' the Doctor glanced from Madison, to Fyffe, down at flickering screen, and then back at Madison. 'Oh… nothing…' he scratched his earlobe, 'it was just a general… y'know, exclamation of confusion and disbelief.'  
'Oh, good grief,' said Madison.  
'You like saying it don't you?' chimed in Fyffe.

The Time Lord shook his head distractedly and peered at the computer. After a few moments, he looked up at Fyffe, realizing that she had said something.  
'I'm sorry,' he said, 'I like saying what?'  
'What,' explained Fyffe.  
'What?' asked the Doctor.  
Madison put her head in her hands.

'Oh!' said the Doctor as his brain caught up with his ears. 'Oh… right, I like_saying_ what…that is... the _word_ "what", not _what do I like saying_… right.' Fyffe raised her eyebrows and said nothing, while Madison peered out of the room again and wondered if she would be able to locate some form of aspirin… or a mallet.

The Doctor leant backwards in his chair and placed his feet on the table with a soft_thunk_. For a moment he frowned, seemingly lost him his own thoughts. His five muddy toes on his single bare foot waggled experimentally in the cool air of the room while the Doctor tilted his head and stared upwards, a remote expression plastered upon his face. After scratching his cheek thoughtfully, he finally shrugged one shoulder in a half-hearted agreement.

'It's a good word,' he concluded, 'rolls of the tongue.'  
'So does the word "influenza",' said Fyffe absently.

Madison gritted her teeth and swung herself back into the room, shooting a quick glance at Fyffe and saving her most venomous glare for the Doctor. Surely they must be aware of how idiotic they were being? They couldn't have that short an attention span, surely?

'I thought you two wanted information,' she muttered, 'and now you're wasting time talking about influenza, and the word what!… I don't even know what an influneza _is_!' She strided around the back of the desk and sharply slapped the Doctors bare foot. He flinched as her palm of her hand made contact and sheepishly removed both his feet from the desk. Giving him a curt nod of approval, Madison leant over him and began tapping on the keyboard.

'Alright then,' she said, pouring over the dusty screen. 'So… what was the problem?'  
'What, before or after we started 'whatting' to much?'  
'Shut up,' said Madison absent mindedly.  
'Good point,' said the Doctor.

Fyffe wandered around the edges of the room and ran her hand distractedly over the grimy brickwork. From behind her, she could hear the Doctor trying to explain to Madison what he had been whatting and why. But it didn't matter to her anymore… Not only had the Time Lord not been able to comprehend the information, but neither had she. Not that _that_ was surprising... she was sure the letters were familiar, but she still couldn't work out how to think in the right way in order to understand them. Everything was to… _confusing._

The Doctor's voice drifted over from the computer. '… with my TARDIS dead, there are only so many languages I can translate. And _this_ language,' there was a small thunk as the Doctor tapped the screen, 'I've no idea about.'

Madison shook her head at the unfamiliar blobs.

Without warning, the door to the room suddenly burst open with a shattering sound. As the three inhabitants of the room sprang upwards at the sound, they found themselves staring into the barrels of six black guns. Between the splintered doorway, came the over-enthusiastic, wide eyed General of Tendra's army. He stopped in the centre of the room and glowered at the Doctor, Madison and Fyffe as they were ushered into a line in front of him.

'Well well well,' he said, in perfect imitation of a stereotypical villain, 'what do we have here then?'

* * *

_Onwards we go...  
I've got big plans for the next section. Well... probably not that big. But good enough to excite me._

_Hope you enjoyed _


	11. Chapter 11

_Hokay, here be part 11.  
I don't think I mentioned it before, but I would just like to sincerely thank everyone who has followed this story so far and has rated it. Thank you so much!_

_I'm a tad unsure of this chapter... it feels like a bit of a mish mash to me, like there are some points I know I could explain better... but anyway, don't let that deter you. Please let me know what you think. :)_

_Enjoy!_

* * *

The General paced up and down in front of the three intruders. It would soon be quickly established that he was the human equivalent of an excitable bulldog. Once he had something fixed into his head, he found it very hard to let it go, unless of course someone distracted him with a shiny ball or lump of wood (not literally). At this point in time, the only thing he was thinking was that these three strangers should _not_ be in this room, and therefore, they were breaking the law - something that he had a large say in.

'Rrrright!' he barked, 'I hwant to know hwat you think you were doing, and I hwant to know it now!'   
The Doctor watched him as he stalked backwards and forwards.  
'Look,' he said, 'if you'd just–'  
'Silence!' screamed the General.

He turned smartly on his heel and pushed his eccentric face towards the Doctor's. 'I am asking the questions here, understand? Hyou are trespassing on government premises, without permit or authorization I may add–'  
_'Some government_,' murmured Madison.  
'Silence!' shrieked the General again.

'Well, I'm sorry,' she replied sarcastically, 'but so far, all I've seen your soldier-boys do is run around in circles and cry for their mummies!' there was a muffled rumble as another bomb landed somewhere far above them.  
'What are you going to do about it?' Madison demanded.  
The General looked mildly confused. 'About hwat?'  
'The war, you stupid idiot!' She lent backwards as the General's quivering finger was waved threateningly in her face.

'Now you listen to me,' the General growled. 'Hwe have been analyzing the enemy and are at this moment coming up with the solution to the problem,' the room shook and some dust sprinkled down from the ceiling, 'everything is under control!' he screeched above the growl of explosions.

The Doctor glanced upwards at the cracked ceiling. 'If that roof falls on us, I… I really won't be happy,' he said. 'There've been too many roofs collapsing on me recently.'

'Silence!' screamed the General, thrusting his podgy finger towards the Doctor's bemused face. There was a moment's pause as the wide eyed man tried to stare down the Time Lord before he found he had the irresistible urge to blink. Wrenching his eyes away, the General glanced down at Fyffe, who was smiling faintly while standing with her hands clasped together behind her back. He crouched down so that he was level with her face.

'And who are you, little girl?' he asked, suddenly trying to sound jolly and ending up looking more like a disgruntled farmer with heavy constipation. Fyffe smiled sweetly at him, but kept her mouth firmly clamped shut.

'She might not talk to you,' guessed the Doctor, 'she tends to take what you say to her very literally, and you told us to–'  
The General's head snapped up. 'Silence!'  
The Doctor nodded, 'sorry, sorry.'

Madison glanced at the Doctor and rolled her eyes at the General, shaking her head as she vented her exasperation. 'Look,' she said, trying to sound calm, 'I'm Madison Carter; I live on the east flats at the back of the Mill… the ones that are sill standing anyway. These two,' she indicated Fyffe and the Doctor with her head, 'they're arrived just after the bombs–'

'Ah Ha!' The General shot upright with a triumphant look on his face and glowered at the Doctor, '_Spies_ then are we?'  
'What? No!'  
'Silence!'

As though the General wanted to clarify his position in things, he moved away from Fyffe's innocent smile and waved his finger in the Doctor's face. 'I'm asking the questions here,' he growled.  
In reply, the Doctor frowned in mock puzzlement and said: 'are you?'  
The General blinked. 'Yes!'  
'Really?'  
'Yes!'  
'Does it give you a sense of authority?  
The General shifted, '…a sense of…'

'Authority,' prompted the Doctor. 'Y'know, you're standing here with your soldier boys and their big menacing guns all pointed at us. We can't do anything, _completely_ under your control, and then you start pacing backwards and forwards being all threatening and asking all the questions… this is you asserting your authority, don't you think? And trust me it's very impressive, I almost fear for my life.'

Madison watched the Doctor closely. He was staring intently at the General and had such a look of honesty and truth in his face, she could almost believe the fear he was claiming he had. But… she had seen into his eyes, and knew there was no way he could be afraid.

Madison bit her lip and tried to suppress a smirk at the oblivious face of the General. It had suddenly occurred to her that the General couldn't see past the Doctor's act, and the conversation between them was suddenly starting to become very funny. In response to what the Time Lord has said, the General inflated his chest in pride.

'I have the authority to do anything I hwant,' he said, 'with the Mayor temporarily absent; I have complete command of the city.'  
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. 'No!'  
'Yes.'  
'Really?'  
'Yes.'

Shaking his head in mock disbelief, the Doctor nudged Madison with his elbow. 'Can you believe that?' he said, 'this man is in _charge._' Madison said nothing, unsure if she would be able to keep a straight face. The Doctor shook his head and gave the General a look of complete admiration.

'Now _that_,' he said, his voice overflowing with sarcastic approval, 'that is something to be proud of.' The Generals chest inflated a few inches further as the Doctor beamed at him. 'What happened to the Mayor in order to _finally_ promote you to this most esteemed of roles?' he asked.

'Oh, she's been missing for over two weeks now,' said the General, still glowing under the Doctors lavished awe. 'I've been maintaining the city for a while now. Of course, the first thing I did was change all the old defensive strategies, pointless guards on the gates, stupid sentry duty along all the walls, that sort of thing, and I put my own in place.'

There was a sudden stillness in the room.  
With a smile fixed firmly upon his face, the Doctor gave a single slow nod. 'Yes… and that worked well, did it?'

'Weeeeeeell,' the General said, scratching his cheek, 'we're still flattening out a few bumps and all, but it seems to be working fine…' Madison shot the Doctor a look of horror at the stupidity of the man.

'Of course,' continued the General, 'the new regime has nothing to do with the war. That was a matter of timing and chance.'

The Doctor nodded hurriedly, 'of course, of course… but,' he waved his hand in a vague gesture, 'say… for example, the Mayor had gone missing _because_ there was a planned attack, and then you go and change all the defensive strategies…?'

'Oh… we'd have known all about that,' said the General jovially. 'Everything is under control now that I'm in charge.'

Once again, the Doctor was forced to give a sarcastic nod. 'Yes, I can see…' he said, the fake approval once more dripping off his voice, 'and… because you're the one who's now in charge… that's why you're asking all the questions? Is that right?'

The General jerked his head downwards is a sharp nod. 'That is affirmative,' he said.  
'You do it very well,' commented the Doctor.  
In response, the General ripped off a smart salute. 'Thankyousir!'

There was a faint creaking sound from the corner of the room that was completely overlooked by the General, but it was loud enough for Madison to realize that the six silent guards were trying very hard to stifle their sniggers. The Doctor's eyes flickered to the guards then back to the General.

'It's just that –'  
There was another loud snort that was successfully turned into a hurried cough, and from the guards came a low snuffling as they fought to swallow their laughter. Several of them were going very red in the face, and even Madison was fighting to stop the corners of her mouth from moving. In the small space, an almost silent whisper was heard running through the men:

_The General just saluted the prisoner! _

And then the General's slow brain caught up with what had just happened. His mouth tightened into a thin white line, his eyed slowly widened, and his face began to glow into an almost fluorescent red.

The Doctor's face adopted a brief manic smile before it snapped back into a neutral expression of perfect calmness. He stood still and watched a vain begin to pulse on the Generals left temple, waiting for whatever the man could throw at him. He had known what he was doing, had known the possible consequences, but knew it was worth it. Although he may have not been able to find anything he understood on the cities so called 'data base', at least now he had some information to go on: a missing Mayor.

In front of him, the General looked as though he was about to explode. The Doctor considered him. This man was an idiot, that much was obvious, but what was more worrying was that he was arrogant… Arrogant idiots often have very little but their pride, and if you break it, they have no wit to fall back on, only violence.

In a swift movement of scarcely controlled fury, the General took two long strides forward, and brought his fit swinging round in rage fueled violence. He punched the Doctor hard in the face, baring his teeth as though he were a wild animal. Madison gasped and Fyffe let out a curious shriek as though she herself had been wounded. The movement was sudden and horrifying and the Time Lord recoiled backwards under the blow.

At the sudden outburst of the General, the six guards rushed forward from their corners in the room. Both Fyffe and Madison were grabbed roughly by their shoulders and the final two guards rushed forward and grabbed the Doctor under his arms, half supporting him and half constraining him as he stumbled.

Once all three were secure, the General stalked forward and glared maliciously down at the Doctor. His face contorted in an ugly expression as he fought to maintain his self-control and he raised his fist threateningly, letting it stop a few inches away from the Doctor's face.

'_You_,' he hissed venomously, 'you will _very _seriously _regret_ what you have done.' The Doctor struggled upright and gazed blearily at the clenched fingers, which were quivering dangerously in front of him. The General let off a long growl. '_You_ will keep your mouth _shut_ from now on! Do you understand?!'

The Doctor said nothing, trying to pull himself upright again, but the General aimed a heavy kick into his stomach and he collapsed onto his knees on the floor. Despite his inability to get up, the two guards did not let go of his arms and held them tightly behind his back as he struggled.

From the other end of the room, came a sudden snarl.

Fyffe stood, rooted to the spot, and let her eyes fill with a slow boiling hate. In an abrupt movement, she jerked herself free of her guard and leaped forward, towards the General. The Doctor's pain contorted face suddenly became molded with fear as he caught the girl's movement. More than anything, he did not want Fyffe to suffer simply because of him, and he knew that the violent man that still loomed in front of him was capable of almost anything.

Fyffe reached the General and grabbed him tightly around his wrist, pulling his raised arm downwards away from the Doctor's face. The General looked down at her with a mild surprise as she glared up at his piggy eyes, and then his mouth contorted into a smirk.

'No,' whispered Fyffe quietly.  
The General pushed his face into hers. 'No what, little girl?' he patronized.  
Fyffe gave a slow, hollow smile. 'No,' she warned again, her voice suddenly callous and cold.

Still smirking at the young girl, the red-faced, piggy man turned away and tried to jerk his arm out of Fyffe's grip. Unexpectedly, he found that he could not move it. Instead of heaving himself away and causing the girl to lose her hold and fall, the General realized that he could not break the white-knuckled grip of the girl. He glanced down at her and gave the stormy blue eyes a bewildered look.

Fyffe glowered up at the man and let a slow hiss escape from between her teeth. For a second, the General's eyes widened in shock, before she tensed her arms and let out an involuntary snarl. Under the shocked stare of everyone in the room, Fyffe twisted her body so that she was facing away from the General and, straining forwards, swung the man fiercely over her shoulder and hard onto the grimy floor.

As his body made thudding contact and he grunted in surprised pain, there was the sudden clicking of four different guns being cocked.

'Fyffe!' gasped Madison.  
The girl hissed again, her deep blue eyes crackling with electricity as they flitted between each gun barrel. His pride mortally wounded, the General sprang upright and pulled out his own pistol, aiming it directly between the young girl's eyes.

'Stop!'  
The voice of the Doctor echoed within the room, commanding, assertive, but mingled with pain, fear and horror. As it faded away, it was replaced by a hideous silence, punctuated only by the heavy breathing of the General, and of Fyffe.

Still held by his arms in an awkward position on the floor, the Doctor stared up at the red faced man. 'You don't have to do this,' he said.

The General glowered, bared his teeth, and cocked the gun. The small click it made echoed around the room, much like the Doctor's voice.  
'Please!' gasped Madison. 'Just look at her!'

At the sound of the Doctor's voice, Fyffe had straightened up and spun around to look at him. Her eyes were suddenly round, wide and gentle and she gazed at him with a hurt and crumpled expression on her face. The Doctor returned her gaze with a calm look on his face that did not extend to his eyes.

'What ever you want,' he told the General, '… just stop.'

Pulling himself even further upright and inflating his chest once more, the General made a curt flick of his hand and the seven guns that were pointed at Fyffe were lowered. Completely surrounded in the middle of the room, she seemed so small and vulnerable. As a guard rushed forward to grab her, her eyes flitted to the floor and she trembled slightly as she was pulled backwards.

Madison watched the red faced General as he began pacing in front of her, and felt a deep sickening feeling of horror settle in her stomach. _He was going to shoot her… he was going to murder a child…_

'Riiiight!' snapped the General, happily back in the role of pompous idiot. And just like that, the atmosphere of the room changed. As the Doctor was pulled onto his feet, he shot a sideways glance at Madison and twisted his mouth into a grimace of a grin. The fear had vanished from his eyes and he watched the General with a new expression of concentration and brooding. The General began pacing once more, suddenly looking once again like an idiotic and over enthusiastic farmer, instead of the terrifyingly manic man he had been only a second or so before.

'_Now,_' he said, 'I'm asking the questions, and I hwant to know who you are!'  
In a final act of defiance, the Doctor glowered at the man and said: 'you told me to keep my mouth shut.'

The General spun around bore down upon him like a disgruntled balloon.  
'Tell me who you are this instant!!' he screamed.  
'Well, I –'  
'SILENCE!'

The Doctor rolled his eyes as the General returned to his pacing. He seemed to be thinking hard about what to do next, and it looked like a tremendous effort. Madison was still watching him with a horrified expression, and Fyffe was standing mutely, her body still shaking slightly as though in silent rage. It was only when she fleetingly looked up at the Doctor, that he saw her ashen face and wide, desolate eyes.

When the General finally stopped pacing, his large and popping eyes held an evil glint.  
'Lock them up!' the order came out as a bark. 'They'll feel more like talking,' he sneered, 'once they go without food for a while. Now get them out of my sight!'

Madison's mouth fell open and she moved to protest before she felt firm hand gripping her shoulders and wrists. The Doctor had been bloody _trying _to talk to him! Was he so stupid that he didn't realize that he was contradicting himself every time he said "silence"? And now they were being treated as prisoners?! She _came _from this city! There was no way she could _believe_that this idiot of a man was allowed this sort of command. Couldn't every see that he was just a moron?!? A soldier stepped forward and ripped off a smart salute.

'Yessir!' He grabbed the Doctor roughly by the shoulder and twisted his arm behind his back, he then paused, looking apprehensive, 'um… _where_, Sir?'

The General's final words came out as an ear splitting shriek.  
'I DON'T! CARE _where_ you take them; just get them out of my sight this VERY INSTANT!! And if I see them again before I'm ready, then whoever is near me at the time shall be very, VERY, _VERY_ SORRY!'

* * *

_Yeah... getting exciting now!  
Oh, and was it understandable?_ _Sorry, got a paranoid moment going on here :)_


	12. Chapter 12

_Sorry its been such a long time, I had a tad touch of writers block. Actually, it was more like writers slab... are slabs bigger than blocks? Ah well, my creative juices are a bit sparse at the moment, so as a consequence its a bit of a filler chapter, sorry... _

_And Fyffe is less... Fyffe-like. I put it down to the fact that shes a bit overwhelmed because of what she did in the previously. It'll make much more sense in the grand order of things, but for the moment, it'll probably just be annoying... _

_Heh, I always find something to complain about, don't I? Anyways, enjoy it!  
Comments are always appreciated... Thankee :P _

* * *

The Doctor lay on the floor and stared up at the pastel white ceiling. It wasn't a particularly interesting ceiling, in fact, as far as ceilings go, it was below average, but since he had been flung violently into the room and ended up on his back staring up at it anyway, he decided to give it some consideration… it was better than watching Madison pound her fists against the door and attempt to shatter both his eardrums with her screaming. 

Growing bored with the ceiling and impatient at his now throbbing ears, the Doctor pulled himself into a sitting position and gently winced at his bruised stomach. It seemed to hurt much more than his face… he reasoned that it was because he was more frequently hit in that area. Shaking his head, he glanced around the room and saw Fyffe crouched in the corner, hugging her knees. She seemed to have a vacant expression on her face that was much more worrying than her usual dreamy state, the same look she had had after stopping the General.

With the room still echoing with Madison's shouting, the Doctor shuffled over to the young girl and lent against the wall beside her. She appeared not to notice him which didn't worry the Time Lord too much, as he had no idea what to say to her anyway. Dealing with monsters, aliens and the stupidly impossible were all very well, even towards his companions and… friends… he was fine with them, a little awkward maybe, but he could manage, he _had_ managed… but when it came to little girls who refused to tell him anything about who they were, said strange and frighteningly familiar things, developed deep and emotional attachments, suddenly exhibited extreme strength, and are now sitting, hunched in a corner and shivering with a glazed, empty expression on their face… how was he supposed to deal with that?

'I used to have a dog you know,' he said eventually, trying to coax her into some form of communication. 'But then… you probably don't know what a dog is. Do you get dogs here? Or… from wherever you were from?'

Fyffe raised her head and stared at the wall on the opposite end of the room still apparently oblivious to the man beside her. The Doctor followed her gaze and then glanced back down at her face, trying to figure out if she had heard him or not. He didn't want what he was saying to sound patronizing or false, but he wanted to help her. There was a strange crawling sensation in the back of his mind that made him feel like he was attached to her, as though their futures were intertwined… or possibly their past, he was always slightly foggy on timelines.

'Most intelligent dog ever he was,' he said wistfully, 'he always used to beat me at chess, even when I wasn't playing… and monopoly for that matter, which really annoyed me cause what would a dog know about property ladders and the stock market? Mind you, we never played it that much as we used to argue about who got to be the little dog and who had to be the boot…' he glanced down at his bare foot, overcome by the irony of what he had just said, before shaking his head and continuing: 'and it didn't matter too much about the stairs, I mean, you could always just carry him… in fact, there were always stair issues when I was younger,' a nostalgic look flashed briefly across the Doctor's face, 'before they invented hover pads a good flight of stairs was always the most useful thing you could find…' the Doctor trailed off, realizing that he had been babbling.

After a long pause, Fyffe rested her chin back on her knees and said: 'K9.'

The Doctor stared at her sharply, feeling suddenly confused. 'You mean a canine… the, the synonym for a dog right?' He swallowed, almost hesitant to think about the other meaning of what she had said. 'Or, did… did you mean... my dog?'

Fyffe raised her eyes to meet the Doctor's.

'How did you–?'  
'Something earlier… there was a thing… I didn't mean to,' she said, 'it just sort of came out,' she waved her hands as way of an explanation. There was a brief silence as the Doctor considered weather she was talking about what she had just said, or about her unexpected attack on the General.

There was a sudden muffled voice that called out angrily from the other side of the door and Madison stopped banging to listen to it. As it spoke, her face took on a sour expression and she glowered at the woodwork as though she could see through it to the guard on the other side. When the voice ceased, she turned to the others with a disbelieving face.

'They told me to shut up,' she said in surprise, as though pounding at the door for over half an hour was a normal occurrence. 'I mean, what do they expect?! They locked us in a room for no reason!'

'How about breaking and entering?' murmured the Doctor.  
Madison flumped herself down and sat crossed legged in the middle of the floor, 'sounds like you disapprove,' she said accusingly.

The Doctor looked up, an innocently bewildered expression on his face. 'Me? Now, that would be a bit contradictory to my general philosophy of life.'

'Well, what are you going to do about it?'  
'About my philosophy of life?  
Madison rolled her eyes, 'No,' she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm, 'about us being locked in this room while my city is being destroyed.'

'I thinking,' came the curt reply.  
'Great time to_start _coming up with a plan.'

Lifting his head off the wall behind him, the Doctor fixed Madison with an intense frown. 'I already came up with a plan. Plan one: find out information.' He shrugged one shoulder, 'admittedly, it didn't work out too well, but now we've just moved it along a bit so that we're in the final stages.'  
'What are they then?'  
'Work out how to undo the mess that I've got into when trying to carry out the plan.'

With her eyes shut and her head lent backwards against the wall, Fyffe took a deep breath and said; 'there have been no bombs for a while, and that either means that they've stopped attacking and are coming into the city, or that they're just saving up for another huge assault.' She put her head on one side, 'mind you, it could always mean that they're saving up for another huge assault _then_ they're going to come into the city.'

The Doctor tilted his head backwards against the wall and stared blankly up at the ceiling. 'It makes no sense…' he said quietly.

'Which bit?' asked Madison sulkily.  
He sighed. 'Any of it… I mean, we can assume that the mayor went missing because who ever is attacking wanted her out of the way, they wanted a complete loss of order, they wanted–'  
'–A complete idiot in charge?' said Madison.

From her corner, Fyffe gave a small smile.  
'So, they take the mayor so they can attack the city,' said the Doctor, 'and then… they do…' he frowned. 'But _why_they did it, I have no idea… power? Wealth? Status?'

Madison leant forward eagerly, 'is it something they wanted in the city? Like a secret diamond or room or something?'  
The Doctor looked at her.  
Madison shrugged and looked at the floor. 'I read it in a book…' she mumbled.

'Does Tendra have anything like that in it?'  
Madison opened her mouth, and then shut it again. She wanted to say something impressive, but then she remembered that her city was about as impressive as lump of mould on a particularly unimpressive piece of wood.

'No…' she finally said, 'no, all we have is wool.'

There was a moment of silence where the Time Lord stared incomprehensively at her, before he shook his head distractedly and returned his attention to the ceiling. Madison watched him as he pondered and realized that there must be something deeply troubling him if he couldn't even be bothered to answer her back with some form of exasperated or sarcastic comment.

'This building has a perception filter on it… and we had to search pretty hard to find your so called 'library' of information… And why was the computer in a foreign language?' he asked to himself. Madison shrugged, when he began to explain things, everything suddenly became much more ridiculous and made so much less sense. Catching sight of her movement, the Doctor turned to look at her. 'You couldn't understand it, could you?'

'Nope,' she replied. 'I've never seen it before… In fact,' she admitted truthfully, 'it just looked like squiggles to me.'

'Fantastic,' said the Doctor. 'So, so far all we've got it a building with a perception filter on it for no apparent reason, a public data base that's hidden in a basement and written in an unreadable language, a missing mayor, and some unknown enemy that has decided to attack the city even though there's nothing here for them to gain but about fifty hundred tones of wool.'

Fyffe rested her head back against the wall. 'You make it sound so simple,' she said.  
'Oh, was that sarcasm I detected there?' asked Madison. 'I didn't know you could do sarcasm, Fyffe.'

'You must be rubbing off on her,' said the Doctor distractedly, still deep in thought.  
Although she opened her mouth to argue, Madison found that she had no desire to chastise the Time Lord. What they had been through had inevitably changed her attitude towards him. Whereas before she had been reluctantly helping because there seemed to be no alternative, now… Madison frowned, was she actually starting to believe that the Doctor could make a difference in what was happening?

As the other two sat on the floor, immersed in their thoughts, Madison was witness to the single strangest thing she had ever seen. A small section of the ceiling suddenly began to shimmer and wobble, as though it had momentarily turned to water… but it didn't collapse down upon her, just stayed suspended as part of the ceiling. It was…_extraordinary_, and as Madison stared at it in disbelief, a strange lump of grey metal began to lower itself through the liquid like area, before plopping gracefully down onto the floor.

Madison glanced up at the other two. They seemed not to have noticed the large metal cylinder. How… how could they _not _notice it? It had just drifted casually down _through_ the ceiling!

'Doctor,' said Fyffe.  
'Hmmm?'  
The young girl offered her hand to the Time Lord, fingers outstretched, and he shifted his head to look down at it.

'Will you take this?' she asked. 'I don't have pockets, and you do, and they're probably quite big, and I don't want to loose it.'

The Doctor stared down blankly at the small lump of wood that was nestled in the girl's hands. 'Your twig,' he stated, unsure of what to make of it. He glanced up at Fyffe and noted the complete seriousness of her expression. 'You really want to keep it?'

'Yes.'

He sighed and took the item from her, shoving it into his trouser pocket as he sifted his back against the wall. It was then that he noticed Madison, sat in the centre of the room and pointing silently to her left, her face strained into a fearful expression. Taking a hint, he ran his eyes along her arm and out into the direction she was pointing in.

'That thing…' said Madison quietly.  
Fyffe lowered her arm and gazed at the cylinder.  
'It just came_through _the ceiling.'

They stared at it for a while.

Very carefully, the Doctor placed his hands on the wall behind him and pulled himself up, before cautiously approaching the cylinder and eyeing it curiously. As Madison and Fyffe moved over to join him, he briefly glanced upwards at the ceiling with a mistrusting expression on his face, before returning his attention to the lump of metal. No one seemed inclined to touch it, so they simply stood stared at it for a bit longer.

'It's a cylinder,' said Madison at last.  
'Hmmm,' said the Doctor and he gingerly knelt down beside it, reached out, and rolled it over. On the underside of the metal was a small and cracked screen.

'It's got a screen,' said Madison.  
Four numbers flicked to life on the tiny screen and began to count down.

They watched them for a while in silence.  
'It's counting down,' said Madison.

On the side of the cylinder, a small hatch suddenly opened with a hiss of pressurized steam. The Doctor, Fyffe and Madison all leaped backwards in surprise, but nothing more seemed to happen, so they shuffled back towards the cylinder again and gave it some more silent consideration.

'Uh,' said Madison after a while, 'it's opened.'  
From within the new opening, and in perfect timing to the rhythmic ticking of the numbers, a tiny mauve light began to flash merrily at them.

'Its flashing at us,' stated Madison.  
The Doctor resisted sighing. 'Yes,' he said patiently.

They watched it for a while longer before the Doctor said; 'I hate little mauve flashing lights…'  
Her attention suddenly whisked away from the cylinder, Madison gave the Doctor an incredulous look and said; 'for god's sake, _why_?'  
The Doctor shrugged. 'They always look so smug and cheerful.'

Fyffe lent forward slowly and inspected the flashing numbers as the seconds patiently ticked away. From behind her, she was vaguely aware of Madison's voice as it chastised the Doctor.

'Did the General cause you brain damage when he punched you in the face? How… _how_ can you _possibly _think that small, flashing mauve lights are giving you smug looks?'

Fyffe frowned as she tried to force her brain into thinking along a straight line, rather than its usual course of around fifteen different intertwining scribbles. Then, as something inside her mind clicked, she got slowly up and walked to the opposite end of the room, placing herself as far away as she could from the cylinder.

Next to the metal tube, the Doctor was still patiently trying to make Madison understand that the blinking light was not the main problem at the moment, but she seemed unable to let go of the idea that he was somehow deeply prejudice against little lights that flickered merrily. How could he even begin to explain that every time he saw one of these lights, he inevitably ended up fleeing for his life?

'Look,' he said desperately, 'there are thousands of people who have irrational fears and things that get on their nerves, but that's not what I have and it's not the point–'

'Are you _afraid_of flashing mauve lights?'  
'What? No… no! I just don't like them.'  
'But, why?'  
'I just don't'  
'Why?'  
'I just–'  
'_Why_?'

The Doctor put his head in his hands… of all the times for Madison to start acting like a permanently bewildered child... 'My psychological motive for having a negative approach towards distinctly mauve, illuminative objects is _not _an issue right now!'

Madison stared at him, her hands on her hips. 'Is it the colour?' she asked.  
The Doctor mouthed silently at her.  
'It is the colour, isn't it?'  
'– Look–'  
'Or, is it just the fact that they're flashing rather than being continuously alight?'  
'Mauve!' the Doctor finally snapped, pointing towards the happily blinking bulb; 'is the universal indicator for danger.'

He watched as Madison glanced at the light.  
'And this is the bad sort of danger,' he added. 'The kind that always ends up either killing you, or just taking a few of your limbs as it passes joyfully on its way.'

Madison turned to look at him with a barely suppressed mask of fear on her face.

'Danger…?' she said.  
'Danger,' agreed the Doctor.  
'And it's… bad danger…?'  
Fyffe looked up from her corner of the room. 'It's a bomb,' she said.

* * *

_Whaddya think?_


	13. Chapter 13

Hey hey, swift update, and I feel better about this chapter :)

Still not sure if I'm over my writers block, but I read through my previous chapters and tried to get myself in the right frame of mind. Hmmm... I'm hoping its okay anyways.  
Oh, and the Alkoden returns!

Comments are always appreciated, they are like the cream on top of the strawberries of life.

* * *

Chapter 13

To an Alkoden, bewilderment is like second nature. It's buried so deep into their genetic make up that, from the moment it has developed a consciousness within its mother's womb, it will already have become confused about its position within the world. The last thing a heavily pregnant mother needs is an unborn child that is already questioning its existence _despite_ the fact that it will sill be uncertain of what it actually _is_. In fact, if an Alkonden was ever born that did _not_ display this permanent state of mild bewilderment, it would probably end up being shunned by its fellow Alkoden, kicked out of their closely formed flocks for being different, and inevitably have to live a solitary life somewhere far away and unheard of. The remaining Alkonen within the flock would never speak of it again, and would therefore be completely unaware of its much more fulfilling life of distant travels and adventures, which would most likely end in either a long and happy existence due to its lack of stupidly, naïve bewilderment, or in said Alkoden eating its own foot.

However, none of the information that is stated above is of any use, or importance, as the Alkoden which is currently sitting upon the upturned shell of the TARDIS, is one of the most bewilderedly and confused Alkoen to date. If these fluffy koala-like creatures had the intelligence and forward evolution to arrange some form of hierarchy, within their flock, then this particular Alkoden would have already been promoted to alpha male for the simple fact that it was the most permanently bewildered out of the lot of them.

It sat bolt upright on top of the blue box and stared forward blankly. Then, very slowly and keeping the remainder of its body ridged, it extended its back leg forwards and carefully raised it until it was suspended a few inches in front of its face. Once in this position, it froze again as the seconds ticked by. After a full ten minutes of some detailed imitation of a rock, the Alkoden tilted its head forward slightly, and slyly poked the corner of its tongue out of its mouth before freezing again. When the suspension had developed to a point that was beyond normal consumption, it let off a small purring noise and gave its extended foot a long, slow lick.

It was at this point, that voices drifted up from within the forests dense wall of trees. The Alkoden stopped in mid-lick and twisted its eye sideways to try and sense if these strange noises would present any danger to it. If the owners of these voices had appeared within the clearing, they would have been incredibly shocked to see a police box on its side in the mud, with a small, fluffy and bewildered looking creature sat atop of it, frozen the process of licking its own leg. As it were, the owners of the voices did not appear and, if the Alkoden had been able to understand the language they were talking it, or for that matter, _any _language at all, it is most likely that its already bewildered face would have taken on the impression of complete bewilderment (if that were possible.)

'To the east?' said the first voice, which sounded like a disgruntled warthog.

'That's where the explosions are from,' came the curt reply.

Still motionless as it sat on the TARDIS, the Alkoden blinked in a confused manner. Although the first voice sounded hideously forced out in a grunting, squealing manner, it sounded practically normal when compared to the second. There was something, holily wrong with the smooth harshness that clipped its response to the warthog sounding voice. The Alkoden may not have had any intelligence, and spent its life in a state of permanent disorientation, but even its fur rippled and stood on end as the harsh and callous tones drifted through the trees.

'There have been a lot of explosions,' said Warthog, 'you think there will be anything left?'

There was no reply from the second voice; it appeared almost as though Warthog should not be dignified with an answer. Apparently unknown to this, Warthog plunged on, as though he was nervous of his companion, and felt the need to fill the sudden silence.

'I mean… I know our intent is for survivors, but… what if she's killed be mistake?'

Still more silence from the second voice.  
'I mean…' Warthog blundered on, 'I know she's not _supposed_ to be killed so, of course, she wont be… that would be to careless. But… what if there were _complications_.'

'Who do you think we are?!' the second voice suddenly spat.  
'I–'

'Do you honestly have so little faith in your own _people_!'  
'But–'

'Listen _very_ closely,' someone with more intelligence than an Alkonden would almost be able to visualize the owner of the voice leaning threateningly over Warthog, teeth bared and eyelids squeezed together, showing only rage infested slits of pupils. 'Even as we draw near to the city walls, a fresh attack will be unleashed. We have been notified that the perception filter that was placed over the Library has been breeched, and that someone was in the data base.'

'But–!'

'The language barriers we established are still in place, so no information was intercepted. But now that it has been discovered, the perception filter will soon fade - it was only placed there as a temporary solution after the Mayor was taken – so part of the reason for the attack is to ensure that the Library is destroyed. A special configured bomb has already been sent over to it and should go off in under seven minutes. Other than that, there is nothing more that you need to know, understand? From this point on, all doubt will cease. Otherwise I shall kill you.'

There was a long silence that followed. Then, very faintly, the noise of footsteps was heard, growing steadily quieter as they moved further away. Once the noises of rustling and crunching disappeared, the Alkoden slowly lowered its leg and blinked stupidly. The words had meant nothing to it, so it was not troubled by what they had been discussing in such a fearful and ominous way. Completely unaware of this revelation, the creature lowered its large, fluffy head and thumped it onto the top of the TARDIS, trying to listen for any noise within. When nothing could be heard, it tried once more at giving the blue box a welcoming sniff, though this plan was somewhat thwarted by the fact that it had no idea as to which part of it was the front and which was the back.

In the end, the Alkoden gave up and sat once more on top of the lifeless ship and proceeded to eat its own toenails with intense concentration. Somewhere east from the creatures spot, a wave of missiles and bombs was suddenly unleashed upon the distant city.

The room shook.

Well… to say _that _would be a complete understatement, but for the narrative purposes of moving the story along, and not dwelling to much on those "heart-wrenchingly-heavy-lurches-send-the-room-jolting-sideways-with-unimaginable-force" descriptions, it could be stated simply that the room shook.

Stumbling for balance between the heavy explosions, The Doctor fumbled frantically with the bomb in front of him. Madison pressed herself as far as she could into the solid wall behind her, feeling her heart quiver with every jolt of the room. Amidst the shuddering of the building and rumbling explosions, the rhythmic ticking down of the bomb seemed worryingly loud.

'Do something!' she screamed.  
The snappy reply of, 'Working on it!' was only just audible over the thudding blasts. Much like in the TARDIS, a large lump of ceiling made a sudden bid for freedom and collapsed onto the floor sending a cloud of dust into the air. The Doctor glanced upwards nervously, and then re-focused his attention back onto the bomb as Madison pulled herself upright and attempted to stagger towards the door.

'Come on!' she bellowed, 'I thought you could get me out of this! You're a… a… Time whatever you said. Can't you do something!?'

The Doctor glanced up from the bomb, his face full of panicked determination. 'Of course I can do something!' he shouted back, 'I can stop us being blown up for a start,' he murmured to himself.

Madison frowned disapprovingly and another explosion shook the room. Unable to find her balance quickly enough, she found herself forcibly lunched sideways and landed sprawling in the corner.

'Hurry the hell up!' she screamed, once the room had stopped shaking.  
As she struggled, she saw the Doctor pulling himself upright and staggering back towards the bomb. After narrowly avoiding being hit by a secondary lump of ceiling, he collapsed next to the metal cylinder and took two steadying breaths, before diving back into the bomb's complicated maze of wires.

Deciding it would be easier to stay slumped in the corner for now; Madison's eyes darted around to room and came to rest on the figure of Fyffe. The young girl seemed completely unfazed by the surrounding blasts and stood serenely, facing away from them by the single small, cracked window.

The Doctor grimaced and ran his hand distractedly through his hair.  
'What's the problem!?' called Madison, snapping her head back to him.

'I _can_ do it…' she heard him murmur. He glanced up at her and Fyffe. The bomb was down to two minutes. You could _see_ it counting down… it was very much like watching the remains of your life ticking away. There was an unpleasant, gut-wrenching crunch and the room lurched again, flinging its contents violently to one side.

'Hurry up!' Madison shrieked.  
'I am hurrying!'  
'Hurry faster!'  
'How can you hurry faster?'

'I _don't_ care,' Madison said patiently through gritted teeth, 'just _stop_ it. Stop it quickly, or it'll blow up and we will die. Now, I don't want to die, so stop it quickly so that we _won't_ die. You're a _Time_ Lord! A Lord of bloody _Time_! Now STOP the bomb!

'I'm trying!'  
'What the hell's the problem?  
'I'm running out of time!'  
Madison blinked.  
'Oh, the _Irony_!'

The Doctor shook his head and tried to hold two pieces of grey wire together with shaking hands. Glancing up, he saw Madison's face contort as she tried to swallow her panicked fury and he watched as she staggered over to the door and began bombarding it with her fists once more. He dug his hands into his jacket and trouser pockets despite the fact that he_ knew _his sonic screwdriver was buried somewhere in the wreckage of his ship. Feeling his hands close on something small and tube like, the Doctor's hearts momentarily leaped, that is, until he pulled out a small and disheveled looking twig from the depths of his clothing.

Feeling a slight sense of guilt of breaking his promise, which was largely overpowered by his frustration of impending doom, he flung the stick away and plunged his hand into the tangle of wires. In retaliation to his harassment of the cylinder, it proceeded to give him several electric shocks which ran up and down his arm. The Doctor let out an incomprehensible noise of shock and pain, and yanked his arm back out of the bomb.

_Okay_, he thought wildly to himself, _that didn't work, so lets just calmly move on to plan two_… he peered once again into the small hatch where he had been previously exploring. _Okay_, he thought wildly to himself, _can't think of a plan two that doesn't involve a few extra hours or a large chainsaw, so… lets just keep doing what I was doing before and hope to what ever god, or higher entity that's sat up there laughing at me, that I find the fuse wire_.

It seemed the best he could hope for which, admittedly, wasn't much, but the Doctor never liked to completely give up hope. Oh, sure, he could be as cynical and sarcastic as he liked about his impending doom, but he would never allow himself to admit complete defeat even from the most stupid of situations.

Pausing to push his hair away from his face and screwing up his eyes to concentrate over the shuddering of the building, the Doctor momentarily glanced upwards.

'Fyffe!' he called out as he spotted the girl. 'Get away from the window!' It seemed like a sensible thing to shout in the current circumstances, but the girl glanced towards him as though he was insane.

'Madison, get Fyffe!' the Doctor commanded, delving deeper into the cylinder.  
Thrusting herself away from the door, Madison wobbled towards the girl.

'There's a moth,' she said, pointing towards the glass.  
Madison glanced over and saw a small speckle of brown that was stupidly banging itself against the glass in an attempt to get away.

'Right!' she responded stupidly.  
'This moth here,' said Fyffe.  
The room suddenly lurched again.  
'Fyffe! Move!' came the Doctor's cries from somewhere behind Madison.  
'I don't think it's very happy,' commented Fyffe with a concerned look on her face.

'For god's sake, Fyffe!' Madison shrieked above the blasts. 'This building is about to collapse! That bomb is about to explode! We are about to die! Now will you _please _just move away from the window so you don't get impaled on a thousand shards of glass!'

Fyffe looked up at Madison for the first time.  
'Why?' she asked vaguely, 'is that likely to happen?'  
'We're about to die!' repeated Madison in a scream, unsure if she had emphasized this fully.

Fyffe's face took on a momentary image of concern.  
'You don't think it will hurt the moth?'

The room began to shake, building and growing in force until it was impossible to stand. Madison griped the wall in an irate panic as she crumpled down to floor level. 'You make no sense!' she screamed at the girl.

The quaking of the building grew to such a pitch that the metal cylinder began bouncing up and down on the floor, emitting loud clangs every time it thumped down. The Doctor flinched and raised his hands too try and stop the bomb from thudding into him. It was taking bad damage and, even as he managed to grab it to stop it moving, the rhythmic bleeping noise of the countdown rose in speed and pitch.

'Both of you shut up, right now!' he shouted at them. 'I need to concentrate or BANG, got it!?!'  
Madison crawled towards him. 'What do you mean shut up! How can you possibly yell at us for making noise?! This whole building is being bombed!'

'Right!' agreed the Doctor, his hands furiously twisting wires, 'I can deal with stopping bombs - I just have to find the right bit of wire! How the _hell_ am I supposed to turn you off?!'

Unable to cope with the continuous heaving and quaking of the building, Madison lay face down on the floor and groaned quietly to herself.  
'Madison, seriously,' the Doctor said, his eyes scanning the outside of the cylinder as he looked for more options on how to stop it.

'What?' came the answered groan.  
'Go away!'

'_You should have never followed meeee…' _came the low, piteous moaning of Madison, she raised her head and looked at the Time Lord. 'It's all over now…' she whined, 'you should have just left me alone, or just got rid of me once I'd showed you where the Library was…'

The Doctor allowed his head to thump against the cylinder in a complete abandonment of patience. Of all the times… His face suddenly split into a wide grin.

'Madison! You're a genius!' he cried and began running his hands along the smooth body of the bomb.  
Madison looked up, confused. 'I am?'

There was an uncomfortably loud explosion that shook the room again and caused everyone to lurch forcibly sideways. Another chink of ceiling fell in.

'Well… no,' admitted the Doctor after the rumbling had died away, 'but I thought I should say something nice, as we don't have long until boom time, and _if _this is the kind of the bomb that I think it is, and I know for a fact that it is, then it should have a detachable converter…' his searching hands located a oval shaped lump that was attached to the mettle casing, 'and if I give it a bit of jiggery pokery…'

The wining bleeps of the bomb, that had been punctuating the background rumble of explosions, suddenly grew to an almost unbearable climax. Madison threw her arms over her head and made a terrified noise in the back of her throat. It was about to explode.

'See ya, then!' the Doctor called cheerily as he hefted the large bomb between his grip.  
Madison looked up, confused, as the Doctor and the bomb reached the far wall of the room: a wall that, on the other side, had nothing but a large drop to the street below.

'Doc–' she began.  
Then, before her eyes, the Doctor – who was still clutching the large bomb in an awkward embrace to his chest – walked through the wall with little less than a serene ripple of the brickwork.

The seconds ticked away in a sudden horrific silence.  
And then the bomb exploded from somewhere far below.

* * *

Good? Bad? Is my writers block cured? 


	14. Chapter 14

Sorry for the length delay people... its been a bit chaotic.

Here be chapter 14, enjoy it... and thank you once again for all your kind comments :)

* * *

Madison opened her eyes very slowly.  
Not that it made any difference weather her eyes were open or not, the room was so full of dust that is was near impossible to see anything… but the fact that her eyes were now open at least proved to her that she wasn't dead, something which she found grimly comforting.

From somewhere within the thick, waxy cloud of dust, a small voice made a small sound that sounded… Madison frowned, well, small.

'Oh,' said the voice. It sounded very familiar.  
'Fyffe?' Madison called out before inhaling a large amount of smoke and lapsing into a coughing fit.

'Fyffe!?' she chocked. There was no response of the child from within the powdery environment, so she fought for control over her breathing, and pulled herself up, feeling her way along to where she remembered the window to be.

It came as a bit of a shock to find that there was no window.  
It came as even more of a shock to find that it had been replaced by a hole in the wall.  
It came as an even larger and more horrifying shock to find that there was in fact _no _wall at all.

Madison stared at it, or rather, the lack of it.  
'Oh, wow,' she said glumly.

Even as she stared, the layers of heavy dust pored out of the hole like an extremely dirty waterfall, and the room behind her began to clear. Almost fearful of what she would see, Madison turned around.

Half the room was gone. If she had had a clear head at this point, Madison would have mentally corrected herself by concluding that only a quarter of the room was actually _gone_ – that was the part that had been blown up along with the missing wall. The rest of the room was still here, it was just buried under about a tone of rubble: rubble which, if she was any judge, used to be the ceiling. She briefly wondered what the Doctor would have said about this, before the thought of him brought a pang of horror to her, and she quickly pushed him out of her mind.

Then she realized what she had been staring at for the last three minutes, as standing in front of the rubble and gazing serenely at the disarray of bricks, was Fyffe.

'Fyffe!' said Madison stupidly, as though she didn't quite believe her eyes and wanted to confirm the girl's existence verbally.

'The moth's dead,' Fyffe said despondently.  
Madison blinked.  
'You what?'  
Fyffe turned around slowly. 'The moth,' she said carefully, 'is dead.'

Madison was unsure of how to reply to this so she turned her attention the mass of rubble in front of her. It looked very heavy. From the corner of her eye she saw Fyffe shake her head sadly, and Madison realized that she actually cared about the moth… small things like that actually _mattered _to her.

Fyffe turned and let out another small noise of surprise.

'Oh!' she said.  
Madison jumped in surprise and spun around quickly. 'What? What?!' she said.

Fyffe straightened up and turned back to Madison, her face pinched with new founded concern. 'He dropped the stick!' she said. Her face was so generally crushed that Madison actually pitied the girl.

'But… it's only a stick,' she said gently.  
'He should have it with him,' Fyffe murmured.

Madison frowned. 'Fyffe…' she began.

Fyffe turned away and walked towards the still locked door. The giant hole in the wall had ensured that all of the smoke had cleared, but unfortunately, the only thing that it led to was a large drop to the far away street below. Despite their survival of the explosion, they were still trapped in the room. Under Madison's pitiful gaze, Fyffe pressed her hand against the cold door as though hoping she would pass through it like the Doctor had to the wall.

'Fyffe,' Madison said again, 'the Doctor… won't need the stick.'

Fyffe pushed gently against the door, almost as if she was testing it. 'He_will _need it,' she said, 'he can do without I suppose,' she twirled the twig between her fingers and looked thoughtfully at the door. 'We probably need it more,' she said after a while.

Madison stared at her. She felt like an inexperienced parent who was trying to explain to a child where her favourite cat, Mr Tiddles, had gone after the two tonne truck had hit him. 'Do you understand what happened after the Doctor vanished?' she asked.

'He didn't vanish,' said Fyffe. She twisted her head around and glanced at Madison, before turning her attention to the door. 'I know where you're going with this,' she commented casually. 'Stop it.'

'But…' Madison mouthed silently, 'he walked through a wall!'  
Fyffe let her hand slowly slip off the woodwork.  
'The bomb…' Madison hesitated, trying to make the girl understand. 'He blew himself up!'

'I feel bad for the moth,' said Fyffe, glancing back at the misshapen pile of rubble.

Madison smacked a hand to her head. 'Fyffe, do you ever just listen to yourself when you talk?! A moth has _nothing _to do with anything! The Doctor's dead!'

Fyffe turned around slowly and gave Madison an acute stare. 'There's a perfectly reasonable explication to everything,' she said carefully.

'I know there is, Fyffe!' Madison replied exasperatedly, 'and I'm_telling _you it now! The Doctor walked through a wall with a bomb and now he's…' she faltered, unsure if she wanted to repeat what she has said only moments before.

Fyffe cocked her head to one side. 'He probably just used the spatio-temporal mass converter to firstly change the molecular structure of the components atoms, and then of his bodies own atomic configuration so that they could shift through impermeable matter,' she said.

'What?'

'It doesn't explain the explosion,' said Fyffe, 'but if he were dead, it would feel different… there's no sorrow, no feeling of remorse of grief. I like to trust my impulses, which is why there must be a perfectly good explanation for everything… Maybe his distorted composition meant that the emission of the discharge passed through his permeable state, rather that rebounding off the usual impervious one.'

'What?'

Without warning, Fyffe thrust the twig into the keyhole of the door and began to twist her arm sharply. She flashed Madison a wide grin as she attacked the door viciously.

'What?' said Madison again.  
'What what?' said Fyffe, her attention focused on the twig.

Madison was about to open her mouth and say 'what' again, when something deep inside of her sent up a rapid volley of warning sparks and she took two sharp steps towards the girl. 'Don't, what ever you do, start that off again!' she said.

Fyffe shrugged but didn't turn around. Madison watched her as she twisted and wiggled the thin sliver of tree inside the lock… there was something almost faintly depressing about the girl's undying sense of hope.

'Do you honestly think that you're going to open the door with– ?'  
There was a sudden sharp click that filled the room with an irritatingly smug noise.

Then a silence followed.

Very slowly, Madison took two steps backwards, her eyes wide in disbelief.  
Very slowly, Fyffe pulled the stick from the key hole and gave the door a tentative push.  
Very slowly, the door swung open, accompanied by a faint creaking noise, which sounded to Madison, almost as smug as the click of the lock.

Fyffe leaned casually out of the door and glanced around at the deserted hallway beyond. It was hauntingly empty, which made perfect sense considering the building had just been savagely bombed. Within the long stretch of the dim and hollow corridor, Fyffe's small blond head shimmered as she twisted it left and right, then, coming to a final decision, she stepped out of the room and grinned.

'Fyffe…' said Madison cautiously.

The girl took no notice and bounced slightly on her feet as she considered what to do next. Madison stood stock still and watched her image, framed in the doorway. She opened her mouth to say something else, but before she could speak, Fyffe flung out an arm and pointed to her left.

'This way,' she said, before turning smartly to her right and disappearing from Madison's sight.

There was a moment's pause as Madison stared unblinkingly at the snippet of hallway that she could see through the doorframe. Then Fyffe suddenly appeared again, walking in the opposite direction with her head bowed, as though in deep concentration.

'Fy–'

But before Madison could even call out the girl's name, Fyffe disappeared left again. She was gone slightly longer this time, before she reappeared once again in the doorframe, stopped dead, span twice on the spot, and walked off the exact same way that she had just come.

Within the room, Madison rubbed her eyes. When Fyffe briefly appeared again, this time walking towards the right, Madison called out her name quickly. The girl stopped and looked at Madison expectantly.

'What are you doing?' Madison finally asked.  
Fyffe raised her arm and pointed to the left, 'going,' she explained.  
Madison nodded. '… and are you going to go left now?'

Fyffe looked in the direction she was pointing and lowered her arm. 'Maybe,' she said, and tucked the twig behind her ear.

'Okay, well just don't move for now, got it?' said Madison. She sighed and wondered what actually went through the head of this strange girl. 'Look,' she said as a thought sprang to her mind, 'how the hell did you open a locked door with a twig?'

Fyffe blinked. 'Did I?'  
Madison gaped at her. 'You know you did!' she cried.

A wide smile spread across the girls face. 'That's right, I did,' she said triumphantly, 'and now we go and do whatever we have to do to make things good again.' It sounded so simple when she said it.

Before Madison could think of anything to say in response, Fyffe turned smartly on her heel and marched off to the right. Madison found it very difficult not to sigh, before she skittered out of the room after Fyffe.

A small problem arose when, steeping into the hallway, she found it was completely devoid of anything that even remotely resembled a manically happy girl. In fact, it was completely devoid of anything at all.

'Fyffe?' she called cautiously.

There was no response, and Madison couldn't see the girl at all, not even when she ran the length of the corridor and checked round each of it corners. Somehow, from desperately wanting the Doctor and Fyffe to leave her alone, she suddenly felt very small and empty without them. Even their stupid and never ending obsessions over silly, pointless things would have been welcoming to her now. But as it was… she was alone.

Within the empty city streets, a small cluster of blackened figures stalked along the winding roads. There was nothing tense or fearful about their movements, almost as if they didn't understand the meaning of the word, instead they moved with a calm grace and perfectly calculated prowess.

There was nothing that they feared within the broken and ruined city walls… they were the hunters that were poised to strike. Whatever they were searching for, it would be found. But, for all their unflinching presence, they were unaware that they were being watched.

From a safe distance behind their footsteps, Fyffe crouched behind a blackened crate and watched as their forms steadily moved away. Her blond hair was tucked behind her ears, her mouth twisted in a calculating expression, and her crackling blue eyes held something deep and calculating.

Over half a mile below her, the sewers of the city sulked and crept in their sluggish movements. They were the first thing that had been built when Tendra has been founded and as a result, they were the most well built thing of the city, meaning that on one ever went down there.

On a small ledge that was squashed into the curve of the sewer wall, the Doctor lay unconscious. His left arm was thrust outwards and dangled off the edge of the ledge, and his face was contorted into a strained expression. The fingers of his right hand rested lightly on his stomach and were clenched together as they gripped onto a strange oval shaped lump

* * *

Ta-da!  
Whatddya think?  
Next time... it be Doctor time! 


End file.
